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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK - POSTON + CHICAGO + DALLAS 
ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., Lim1TED 
LONDON - BOMBAY + CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 


THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lt, 
TORONTO 





Kn OF PRINGE > 


THE (,Mayea 28 
CHRISTIAN CONV naa) 


Jf LECTURES ON 
THE JOSEPH COOK FOUNDATION 
1924-25 






By | 
CLELAND BOYD’McAFEE 


Professor of Theology in 
McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago 


NEW YORK 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1926 


All rights reserved 


Copyright, 1926, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 





Set up and electrotyped. 
Published, April, 1926. 


Printed in the United States of America by 
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK 


FOREWORD 


One of the first Western scholars to go around the 
world presenting the Christian Faith to English-knowing 
audiences was the late Joseph Cook, widely known 
through his “‘Boston Monday Lectures.’’ His initial jour- 
ney to India, China and Japan in the latter part of the 
last century not only attracted the attention of many non- 
Christians to the rational aspects of the Christian religion 
but also deeply influenced his own thinking. At his death 
Mr. Cook left his modest estate to establish a Foundation 
to provide for visits of Western lecturers whose aim would 
be ‘‘the statement and defense of the Christian Faith in 
the principal cities of India, China and Japan.’’ ‘This 
Foundation has now become effective and the present vol- 
ume contains the first lectures provided under its terms. 
In addition to the countries named, where these lectures 
were delivered at numerous points, they were delivered in 
whole or in part in Syria, Egypt, Siam and Korea. 

In the preparation of the lectures an earnest effort was 
made to present the Christian Faith for audiences without 
a Christian background, as though it were being consid- 
ered for the first time or as a system still to be discussed. 
There was gratifying reason to believe that this point of 
view was acceptable to many who had not given serious 
consideration to the Christian positions and to many who 
were uninformed regarding them. In the actual delivery 
there were many occasions when the audiences were 
thoroughly trained in the Christian history and 
philosophy, but the lectures were not altered on that 


Vv 


Vi FOREWORD 


account. Groups of missionaries and well trained theo- 
logical students in all the countries seemed to accept the 
different point of view with gratitude. 

To those who heard the lectures, they will seem ex- 
panded at many points. Occasionally this has been done 
for clarity of exposition, but generally the expansion is 
part of the original preparation. Naturally, when it was 
interpreted into other languages each lecture was virtually 
cut in half. The writer makes grateful mention of more 
than fifty interpreters, most of whom were citizens of the 
lands where the lecturing was done. On many occasions 
it was possible to speak in English with entire freedom, 
so widely is that language now known among thee 
members of other races. 

The Trustees of the Joseph Cook*Foundation are the 
Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in 
the U.S. A., and it is a pleasure to the writer to express his 
sincere appreciation of his appointment by them to so op- 
portune a ministry. 


McCormick Theological Seminary, 
Chicago, Illinois, 
January, 1926. 


CHAPTER 


iB 
II. 


III. 


IV. 


V. 


VI. 


VII. 


VIII. 


CONTENTS 


THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION IN ITS HISTORICAL 
ORIGIN——CHRISTIANITY A RELIGION OF A PERSON 
PEIN ED EA ORIGINS Mah bua ails WNectiia ohm bekate relat ial dhaivarrenel Latte Ranke tea 


THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION IN ITS PERSONAL 
ORIGIN——-CHRISTIANITY A RELIGION OF EXPERI- 
POMC Epis tot Cal watt eH Rit eed (ae Hat oc Ast sor an tent ata ALAN has diene hs 


THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION REGARDING GOD. . 
THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTIION REGARDING MAN. . 


THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION REGARDING SALVA- 
TION——CHRISTIANITY A RELIGION OF REDEMP- 


THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION IN ITS HISTORICAL 
PG MERVOLN OIG os) oS etal siy arte Sol eh hy ce oie felnl mhlariaiiar is ey bac a ae 


THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION AND THE WORLD— 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AS THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 


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THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


CHAPTER I 
THE GROUND OF THE LECTURES 
I 


It is my purpose in this course of lectures to present 
anew the essential claims of the Christian Faith and its 
proposals to the world. Several reasons seem to make it 
wise to do so at just this time. 

1. The disturbed condition of the world to-day justi- 
fies thoughtful men in considering any serious proposal for 
a solution of its problems or a steadying of its spirit. “The 
disturbance affects every department of life—political, 
economic, social, intellectual, industrial, religious. It af- 
fects in varying degrees all levels of society and all national 
and racial groups. Indeed, so obvious is this unrest and 
so frequently is it noted that there is grave danger of its 
passing into a commonplace which will be taken for 
granted. Earnest men cannot take this attitude toward 
the prevailing fact of their own day. They may safely be 
asked to face any serious proposal or program for dealing 
with it. 

Several such proposals are made, but none is more seri- 
ously nor more persistently pressed at this time than that 
of the Christian religion. The Faith is not offered as 
an institution nor as an organization, but as a spirit of 
human relationship based on right relation to God. Chris- 


1 


2 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 
tian adherents believe that this religion contains the suf- 
ficient hope of the world, and they ask thoughtful men 
of other beliefs to consider this belief with them. The 
spirit, which is the essential element in the Christian Faith, 
has never yet been fully tried because its breadth of appli- 
cation has not been fully appreciated. There has been 
no adequate attempt to solve the problems of human 
society by the use of a free religion which binds men to- 
gether and yet binds each man to God in a sense of per- 
sonal independence. ‘There is need for such an attempt. 
Christian thinkers believe there is large promise in it. 
The need emerges quite as truly in what is called Chris- 
tendom as in non-Christian lands. Christ is the severest 
judge of the nations that bear his name. In one of his 
own stories he taught that the servant who knows the will 
of his master and yet fails to do it is beaten with more 
stripes than the servant who does not know it and fails 
in it. Adherents of the Christian Faith do not use Chris- 
tendom as a final and adequate argument for their Faith. 
They do not minimize the immense achievements of Chris- 
tianity in Christendom. Instead, most Christian believers 
would be willing to have the total life of Christendom 
compared with the total life of non-Christian nations and 
let the results become part of the argument for Christianity. 
They believe that the enriched lives of men, women and 
children, the opportunities for human progress, the con- 
cern for great interests, the programs of education, and the 
usual and evident marks of civilization so common in 
Christendom, are markedly the product of the Christian 
religion. The problems of Christendom are not solved, 
but they are on their way to solution. What Christendom 
needs is not something other than it now has, but more 
of what it already has, a fuller and fairer application of 
the principles and spirit which now are increasingly well 
known in it. Christendom needs to become Christian as 


GROUND OF THE LECTURES 3 


truly as the rest of the world. It has started towards its 
goal but that goal is its greatest condemnation, as it is 
also its greatest hope. 

And Christian believers cannot allow that their own 
problems should be finally solved before offering their solu- 
tion to other nations. “They even deny that this can be 
done. The world is one, and grave problems of human 
life can be dealt with successfully only by the whole world. 
No nation can live to itself alone and no nation can hold 
its deepest problems as its own peculiar difficulties. At 
their worst they are mere modifications of the problems of 
other nations. In a large and vital conference of repre- 
sentatives of many nations recently there was much talk 
of the peculiar conditions under which these nations were 
working and of the consequent need for special methods of 
work, but at the end of the discussion it was evident that 
the differences were in mere detail, whereas the underlying 
human needs were the same and the deep principles of con- 
duct did not vary widely anywhere. ‘The solution of the 
problems of the world must be one since the world is one. 
There can be no more isolation. There can be heaven no- 
where on the earth while there is hell anywhere else on 
earth. 

President Coolidge of the United States has spoken what 
Christians count a true and vital word: ‘There is just 
one way of gaining international peace, and that is through » 
religion.’’ The Christian Faith is offered as a way to 
world peace. 

The ills of the world are the concern of all. Whatever 
happens anywhere may soon be vital everywhere. None 
of us has forgotten the plague of influenza which swept 
over the world a few years ago. It was the same in all 
nations, bringing death to millions of people and sorrow 
to many millions more. But it did not start everywhere; 
it was not born in all lands. One of our great scientific 


4 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


foundations has traced the plague to its origin in a small 
and unimportant village in Mesopotamia. One day a 
man lay sick in that village. Few of the people of the 
world knew of its existence or cared in the least for its 
condition; they were going on their own ways as though 
they had no relation to the rest of the world. Yet the 
channels of life have now been cut so deep around the 
world that presently the disease was caught in the flow 
of its currents, and spread everywhere. We will never 
again be safe from such possibilities. All proposals of 
isolation which will protect any land from the rest of 
the world are chimerical. For weal or for woe we are all 
in one world, our lives all bound together. 

The world is equally intertwined in its intellectual and 
social interests. [he ideas that disturb a nation are often 
born and nurtured entirely outside of itself. “There may be 
living at this hour in some other land the man or the 
group of men who will yet rise up to unsettle the most 
desirable conditions of your own nation. You may in 
turn be breeding the men who will lead movements of 
injury in far distant lands. Once men could build pro- 
tective walls around their countries. “That day is past. 
Even if we should lose all sense of brotherhood and obli- 
gation to other men, we would still be challenged in self- 
defense to recognize our unity as a race, a unity which 
forces us to share our perils and to solve our problems 
as a whole and not as isolated units. 

Most aggressive movements for the cure of the evils of 
the world are now being made under Christian auspices, 
beginning with their own lands. They are not always 
wise but they are earnest. “The recent world cataclysm, 
in which they were chiefly concerned—a cataclysm not yet 
ended in some parts of the world—has revealed to them 
their failure to give their own religion the place it ought 
to have. They find that cataclysm a standing rebuke, 


GROUND OF THE LECTURES 5 


not of the Christian Faith but of the halting application 
they have made of its principles and spirit. Christians 
are to be condemned, and they condemn themselves, be- 
cause they have not been Christian. It is not strange 
that they are restating and urging their faith under such 
conditions. 

2. There is a second and deeper reason for renewed 
consideration of the claims of the Christian Faith at just 
this time. It lies in the fact that this Faith is offering 
itself to every man as a final and sufficient religion for his 
own life. In doing this it is merely proposing to help in 
supplying the deepest need of humanity. Everywhere, 
now, there are religions, the earnest and sincere efforts of 
men to find personal peace and escape from the burdens 
of sin and ignorance and fear which are common to men, 
to find the secret of the wide and joyous life which reason- 
able men feel ought to be lived. A Christian scholar has 
come to the conclusion that religion is essentially the effort 
of man to escape a sense of strange perils around him and 
an even deeper sense of need within him. His inference is 
that if a man were placed in a world where no such perils 
existed and where all his needs are supplied, he would 
have no religion.. Other scholars would differ from him, 
to be sure, but the fact is clear that everywhere men are 
trying to gain the peace and pardon and power which 
religion alone has been able to supply to the heart. In- 
deed, another Christian scholar has collected half a hun- 
dred definitions of religion in the effort to express all that 
it has seemed to different observers. This is no reflection 
on the validity of religion itself. Religion will always be 
difficult to define because it is always connected with per- 
sonal experience. Abstracted from such experience it loses 
its meaning; it cannot exist apart from a human being who 
is religious. But it may be possible for a religion to meet 
the demands of all men, if it deals with the fundamental 


6 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


needs of humanity. The Christian Faith offers itself as 
a world religion, offering to fulfill the purposes of all other 
faiths and to satisfy human needs more fully than they do. 
I am not just now defending that claim, but merely stating 
it as a remarkable one. It is, of course, of the very essence 
of any missionary faith that it shall do this. 

Christian believers are convinced that the faith which 
they profess would enrich all life and bring peace and 
_ power to all men. ‘This involves no condemnation nor 
contempt for any other faith. Many of them are far 
older in the world than the Christian Faith. “They have 
noble achievements to their credit from whose nobility no 
informed Christian would detract by any word or argu- 
ment. Yet it is not on the strength of later appearance 
that the Christian Faith bases its claim. It is because it 
meets human needs, inner, deep needs, that its adherents 
wish it to become universal. One of its thoughtful 
believers describes it as “‘highest in its conception of God, 
a being of holy love, a Father in heaven manifested in 
Christ; highest in moral standards, the spirit and method 
of Christ; highest in the goal at which it aims, the king- 
dom of God on earth, the rule of the spirit that was in 
Christ in all our human affairs.’’ Another has recently 
said that “if we hold Christianity as the one true religion, 
it is because in it reason comes to her highest utterance 
or self-expression.” 

The underlying reason for this daring claim is that the 
Christian faith is held to be truest to humanity. An early 
Christian writer spoke of the human soul as being “‘natu- 
rally Christian.’”’ He meant that the Christian Faith and 
the human soul are so affiliated that when one comes to 
the other there is no destruction but only fulfillment. That 
is the thought of Christian believers. “They have no wish 
to have the peculiarities of any one nation developed in 
another nation. It would be a calamity if all races should 


GROUND OF THE LECTURES 7 


become imitators or copies of any Christian nation. Indian 
Christians are no less Indian for being Christian. It is no 
part of the program of Christian expansion that Chinese 
and Japanese shall become Americans or Englishmen. 
Christian Americans are not less earnestly American. But 
underneath the difference between Americans, Englishmen, 
Indians, the Chinese and Japanese, there is a fundamental 
likeness. They are all human. And it is here that Chris- 
tianity makes its appeal. It deals with us all as those who 
have sinned and need pardon, as those who are troubled 
in spirit and need peace, as those who are weak and need 
power. ‘Those are not traits of any one race. Is sorrow 
peculiar to any nation? Is it only one race that mourns? 
Is the human heart with its longings peculiar to any one 
group’ Is sin unknown anywhere? Alas, no. What 
one man needs all men need, each in his own way, and 
what will bring peace and pardon and power to one will 
bring the same gifts to others. Christianity has brought 
all this to multitudes of adherents and it could not be 
content without offering all these to others. It is some- 
times said that there cannot be one religion for all the 
race since men are many; the reply is that there can be one 
religion for all because humanity is one, The Christian 
Faith is sometimes spoken of as a “‘Western”’ religion; its 
defenders sometimes reply that it is really an ‘‘Eastern’’ 
religion, by reason of its historical origin. Neither point 
is well taken. Christianity is not a Western religion nor 
an Eastern religion; it is a religion for humanity. Any 
‘traits in it which are peculiarly Western or Eastern are 
separable from itself and are testimonials to its capacity 
to serve the needs of men everywhere. 

The Christian Faith, therefore, makes two daring 
claims: one is that it contains within itself the material 
for the solution of the deepest problems of the world; the 
other is that it contains the supply for the deepest needs 


8 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


of all men everywhere. On either account it must natu- 
rally be offered to the world as a satisfactory and final faith 
for the souls of men. Is it not so when a cure is found 
. for any plague of the world? Does it not become at once 
the right of the whole world to know of it? Yellow 
fever, cholera, hook worm, tuberculosis, are now the con- 
cern of earnest men in every nation. Such men would 
count it shameful to be silent while the evil still injures 
their fellows, if they knew the cure. It cannot be other- 
wise with Christian believers, since the evils with which 
they are concerned are the deepest in the world and the 
hope which they have to offer is the richest the world can 
receive. 

3. A third reason for facing anew the claims of the 
Christian Faith at this time lies in the strong aggressive 
movement of that Faith in the world to-day. There has 
been an increasingly rapid spread of the Christian religion 
everywhere during recent years, specially during the past 
century and a quarter. It is not a casual or accidental but 
an organized movement, open, unconcealed, and with 
declared purpose of continuance. It is probably the most 
widespread and purposeful movement being consciously 
advanced in the world to-day. Its results are widespread. 
From time to time there occurs some obvious and arresting 
demonstration of those results and of the strength of the 
movement. Whereupon it appears that three reactions 
toward it arise: some welcome it, some oppose it, some are 
indifferent to it. In either case it is clearly wise and proper 
that the actual meaning of it shall be made plain. 

Intelligent advocates of the Christian movement are con- 
fident that most of the opposition to it is honest and that 
indifference to it is wholly natural. But they are equally 
confident that opposition arises from mistaken ideas of its 
purpose and meaning, sometimes due to the mistaken 
methods of presentation of its own advocates, sometimes 


GROUND OF THE LECTURES 9 


due to the lack of attention to it on the part of its oppo- 
nents. And they are sure that no earnest man would be 
indifferent to so great a movement of so large a portion of 
humanity if he realized what it involves of promise for 
human good. When one opposes a movement in which 
many of his fellowmen are concerned, it is of first impor- 
tance that he understand what it is. There are ideas 
regarding the Christian religion which would make Chris- 
tians themselves oppose it, if they were correct ideas. As 
some opponents of the Christian movement describe it, the 
movement deserves all condemnation. But these descrip- 
tions would not be recognized by advocates of that move- 
ment. The motives ascribed to its advocates are often 
such as they themselves would be the first to condemn. 
The purposes of the movement are often outlined by its 
enemies in such terms as are wholly incompatible with any 
intelligent understanding of the religion which is being 
propagated. It is surely desirable that such a world-wide 
movement be understood in terms of those who advo- 
cate it. 

It is equally desirable that those who welcome the 
Christian expansion renew from time to time their under- 
standing of its fundamental elements. The differences 
among themselves may often arise from loss of the central 
and determining heart of the aggression which they are 
making. Many of the advocates of the movement are 
from other lands than those in which they are aiding it, 
and many of those who are of these lands are naturally 
taking their understanding of the Faith from these earnest 
leaders. Sometimes it becomes complicated with phases 
which are only incidental to it, and there is help in going 
back again to its essential elements. What is it that the 
Christian Faith proposes to the world in this significant 
Christian movement? It is reasonable that answer should 
be made in the various ways which may aid in understand- 


10 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


ing it. This course of lectures is another attempt to make 
the answer clear. 
II 

Certain considerations may be further urged before the 
main task is attempted. 

1. Christianity is not tentatively held by its adherents. 
They do not hold it as an emotion nor as a blind hope but 
as a conviction to which they are unavoidably led by their 
experience and the history which lies behind them. ‘There 
is a solid body of facts which Christians have faced and 
which can best be explained by this Faith. Nothing else 
could furnish the clue to the history of the Christian Faith. 
It has had unworthy chapters, of which no others are 
more severe critics than Christians themselves. “There have 
been times when the genius of Christianity has been for- 
gotten or contradicted and some adherents have sought to 
force others into their conviction. It is to be noted that 
the escape from these bad times has always been by way 
of a renewed and assertive conviction on the part of loyal 
adherents of the Faith. In any true faith there is provi- 
sion for differences, and if that provision is either abused 
or denied the escape is simply by return to it and the asser- 
tion of conviction again. This has happened many times 
in Christian history. The Christian conviction is not a 
bondage but a wide liberty. It is not a clamp which a 
few set on the minds of others, but a fellowship in which 
all may share. 

2. The result is that there is not and cannot be a com- 
plete and final statement of what Christianity is. If it 
were an institution or an organization or a system of any 
kind, it could be worded with finality. But, while it has 
and uses all those things in various forms, it is none of 
them. It is a spirit of life, a body of living truth. Any 
vital faith is more easily described than defined, just as 
any marked personality is more readily described than 


GROUND OF WLUBE (LEC DURES 11 


defined. ‘This is especially true of the Christian Faith since 
it is essentially the religion of a Person, Jesus Christ. He 
becomes the test of all differences. In the quaint phrase 
of John Wiclif (who himself suffered at the hands of 
some who made no allowance for differences), whatever 
is done or said, no man must hold any faith as Christian 
which makes Jesus himself a heretic. “To a Christian, 
Jesus is right, whoever else is wrong. [he constant test 
of any teaching is its agreement with the teaching of 
Christ. The constant measure of any spirit is its agree- 
ment with his spirit. But if the Christian Faith is right 
about who Christ is, then no single human system of 
thought could cover all of his truth. “There may even be 
room in statements of Christianity for what look to be 
contradictions, though they will be only apparent and 
their reconciliation will be wrought out in some higher 
and wider concert. [his has happened more than once. 

3. A further result is that Christian believers seek to 
lay no restriction on the thought life of those who may 
accept the Christian Faith. At an intéresting crisis in 
Christian and political history, a leader once said that God 
had more light yet to break forth from his word. It 
has proved true. Christians do not come to other lands 
with a finished and closed faith. Its substance is fixed and 
assured, but the interpretations that may be put upon it 
are many. New applications are always possible for the 
new day and the new conditions under which other 
nations live. From its beginning the Christian Faith has 
been the same and yet never the same. Its central Figure, 
its gift of pardon, peace and power, its sacred book, its 
message of a spirit of life—these have not changed. Suc- 
ceeding generations have felt the same power and have 
rejoiced “in the same assurances about God and _ their 
fellows. And yet each new generation, as each new race, 
has discovered new meanings and new values in the old 


12 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


.truth. Christianity is a vital, not a merely static fact. It 
has its fixed points around which the whirl of life runs, 
but they are vital points which set the mind free. 

4, In the third lecture attention will be called to the 
personal phases of Christianity, phases which make it im- 
possible to judge it by all those who live in Christendom. 
A man is not made a Christian by the fact that he finds 
his home in a particular land. Indeed, so personal is the 
Faith that some of its adherents object to the very term, 
“Christian land.’ They fear that it implies that Chris- 
tianity could justify conditions in the lands so named, 
conditions which are utterly repulsive to it. They fear 
also that all those who make up the population of a 
Christian land might be supposed to be adherents of the 
Christian Faith. A man becomes a Christian by his own 
choice, not by his nationality. Some of the bad chapters 
of Christian history have been those in which men were 
supposed to be changed from some other faith in a whole- 
sale way. Nothing could be more utterly foreign to the 
Christian system. It is true that every man who lives in 
a Christian land partakes of rich benefits from that Faith, 
but he may be one of its bitterest opponents, because it has 
to be personally apprehended and accepted and a man may 
refuse that acceptance. Some less thoughtful men may 
accept the Faith as a matter of course, but somewhere in 
the history of any really thoughtful man there comes a 
time when he must face its acceptance for himself. At 
such times three things may happen to turn him from the 
Faith; he may fail to give its arguments their weight, he 
may misunderstand its central claims, or he may be con- 
cerned for some phases of life which do not seem to him 
to involve the Faith. 

Instances are readily available for all these causes of 
rejection of the Christian Faith in Christian lands. In 
Italy a celebrated poet had ridiculed Christianity, refusing 


GROUND OF THE LECTURES 13 


all connection with it, but when, in a desire to be fair 
to it, he did turn to the sacred book he was captured by it, 
and committed himself publicly to the Faith. A cele- 
brated British scholar renounced his adherence to the 
Faith, going so far as to write against it, but when he cast 
about among his scholarly acquaintances he found so many 
of them humbly loyal to it that he was led to study it 
afresh, and again committed himself unreservedly to it as 
the faith of his life. In a test of scientific men in America 
a few years ago, it was found that a considerable number 
of them did not hold the Christian Faith nor any other 
religion, but their replies indicated also that they had 
become absorbed in their distinctive departments of study 
and were no longer surveying the field of spiritual interest 
which is the special domain of religion. In Christian lands 
it is preoccupation that explains indifference to the Chris- 
tian Faith on the part of some scholars. Once in a while, 
often enough to be noted, this preoccupation may be 
moral. [here are men whose personal lives would not 
endure the test of Christian ethics. “They do not want 
Christianity to be true nor vital, for, if it were, then their 
own lives would need radical alteration. “The Christian 
Faith lives awkwardly with selfishness and meanness and 
impurity, and if a man is committed to any of these, he 
“must abandon the Christian Faith or his own practices. 
This is not the prevailing fact, but sometimes it proves 
true. Generally the preoccupation which prevents Chris- . 
tian Faith is intellectual or economic. Other interests have 
absorbed attention to such an extent that the interests of 
religion are crowded out. 

This is the easier where, as in America, there are no 
public requirements that demand religious participation. 
There are no religious requirements for public life in 
America, none for social standing, none for commercial 
success, Religion is personal, even with all its many social 


14 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION: 


influences. Nothing forces it on men in a truly Christian 
atmosphere. It need not cause wonder, therefore, if there 
are non-Christian people in Christian lands. Those who 
are Christians are so from conviction, the same conviction 
that is behind the entire effort to make Christianity a world 
force both for the supply of individual needs and for the 
correction of world evils. 

The three especial reasons noted warrant the discussion 
anew of the essential elements in the Christian Faith and 
its proposal to the world. Its main offer to human life 
is of three great gifts: a Unique Person—Jesus Christ, the 
Founder of the Faith; a Unique Book—the sacred book 
of the Faith; and a Unique Experience—the religious expe- 
rience of the Christian believer. “These three gifts suggest 
also the twofold origin of the Faith—in history and in 
experience. “The discussion must now turn toward these 
elements of the Christian proposal. 


CHAPTER II 


THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN 


I 


The Christian conviction has two main sources. In its 
most vital form it issues from personal experience, which 
will be discussed in the next lecture. In its most contin- 
uous form it issues from history. Of course history and 
personal experience are closely related. All history is first 
some one’s experience, and in turn personal experience 
soon becomes part of history. But each person has avail- 
able for his own thinking the experience of earlier gen- 
erations and it is often easier to estimate forces in the long 
range than in one’s own day. 

Christianity has a great advantage in being a founded » 
religion, with an historical origin and a history. As a’ 
faith it is so vital that its adherents may go astray, but 
there is always something to which they can return, some- 
thing by which they may gauge their own progress. The 


Founder of the Christian Faith was not a reformer, in our 


modern meaning of the word, though he did call men back 
to certain neglected truths. He was, essentially, an 
- originator, starting in the world of thought and life new 
currents which had not been running there before. For 
this reason he has always been the norm for Christian ethic 
and religion. ‘The truths he taught were not static but 
vital and hence they were capable of great development, 
but they may always be held true to their origin and it is 


15 


16 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


always possible to carry them in their current form back 
to their first form, in order to determine their accuracy. 
This does not preclude their growth, but it safeguards 
against the introduction of foreign and conflicting matter 
into their normal development. It is as though a gardener 
found his plants endangered by the pollen of strange 
growths but could always bring them back to their pur- 
posed growth by renewing their fundamental nature. The 
vital plant which we call Christianity may gather to itself 
extraneous and hurtful material, but it can always be re- 
newed in its early substance by return to its historical 
origin. 

The value of this historical origin was proved early in 
the history of the Christian Faith, when there appeared a ~ 
system of religion which bore a striking resemblance to it 
at many points, the faith called Mithraism. It had cere- 
monials much like those of Christianity, its traditional and 
mythical founder had many experiences like those of 
Christ, its methods were closely similar. For a time it 
flourished widely and its success seemed to support the 
views of those who discount the value of historical foun- 
dations for religion. But it faded away precisely because 
‘it lacked those foundations. No religion is kept vital by 
its exalted conceptions and lofty practices. If it is not 
rooted in history, if its ideals have never been part of 
human history, if its theories of life are only theories, then 
it will lack power to grip men whose lives are very real 
and who need help in the pressing realities of the world. 
Christianity lived while Mithraism died because it could 
always refresh itself at its original and historical fountain, 
while Mithraism had no such sources. 


II 


The vital fact in this historical origin of the Christian 
Faith is the unique Figure of Jesus Christ Himself. The 


IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN iy, 


main facts of his life are now fairly well known among 
thoughtful men of all nations. The events occurred about 
nineteen hundred years ago. He was uniquely born and 
lived his entire earth!y life of about thirty-three years in 
Palestine, a province of the Roman Empire, where he 
taught and worked marvels of healing and did good in 
many ways. He incurred the enmity of some of the leaders 
of the Jewish race into which he had come, and they in 
turn brought him into disfavor with the Roman authori- 
ties, so that he was put to death by crucifixion. He revealed 
his uniqueness throughout his entire life, but notably in 
the fact of his acceptance of death for the fulfillment of 
the purpose of his life and in his reappearing after his death BS 
by resurrection from the dead. Without these last facts Y 
there is no adequate explanation of the history of the 
Christian Faith. Neither the death nor the resurrection 
of Christ was anticipated by his followers; the former 
was baffling to all their hopes, the latter was incredible to 
them until they were borne down by indubitable experi- 
ences. [hey had expected a totally different outcome for 
his life, and it was only after the events that they came 
to see large meaning in his death and to accept his resurrec- 
tion. But from that time the Founder of the Christian 
Faith has been thought of, not as a merely historical 
Figure, but as a living reality in the world. 

It was inevitable that such a figure as he is claimed to 
be should be the subject of endless discussion. Scholarly 
opinion does not seriously discuss the reality of his earthly 
life. Sir James Frazer, a scholar in the field of anthro- 
pology whose opinions have great weight, expresses the 
matter in this way: 


The doubts which have been cast on the historical 
reality of Jesus are in my judgment unworthy of 
serious attention. Quite apart from the positive evi- 
dence of history and tradition, the origin of a great 


18 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


religious and moral reform is inexplicable without 
the existence of a great reformer. To dissolve the 
Founder of Christianity into a myth, as some would 
do, is hardly less absurd than to do the same for 
Mohammed, Luther and Calvin. Such dissolving 
views are for the most part the dreams of students 
who know the great world chiefly through its pale 
reflection in books, 


It should be remembered that there is no element in the 
life or work of Christ which has not been the subject of 
constant and sharp criticism and investigation. He has 
not been blindly accepted nor loosely held, and Christians 

fare not fearful of the continuance of the criticism nor do 
they count it either irreverent or impious, for the appeal 
of religious faith must always be to man at his intellectual 
_best. 
Christian believers have found their Master unique at 
/ many points, chiefly in these three: in his person, in his 
| teaching, and in his work. The third must be the subject 
of later lectures, for it is especially in his work as Savior 
and as builder of a Kingdom of God in the earth that he 
has mastered the hearts of his followers. It is in this 
work that he has shown himself able to lift the burden of 
sin from the heart and set the will free to a new life. More 
Christians would choose the word Savior for their Master 
than any other one word. And it is common testimony 
from lands where he is newly known that it is this saving 
-work of Christ that first captures the thoughts of new 
believers. ‘To be set free from the shadows of fear, from 
the sense of sin, from the dread of the future, to be given 
what one of the Christian writers calls the glorious liberty 
of the sons of God—that is the outcome of the unique 
work of Christ. 
1. There has been no wide difference regarding the 


IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN 18 


) teachings of Christ. “Their moral and spiritual excellence 
has been quite universally recognized. We spoke a mo- 
ment ago of a certain scholar as having found himself 
captured by Christ when once he gave himself to thought- 
ful study of him. This same scholar phrased it in this 
way: 


One of the strongest pieces of objective evidence in 
favor of Christianity is the absence from the biogra- 
phies of Christ of any doctrines which the subsequent 
growth of human knowledge, whether in natural 
science, ethics, political economy, or elsewhere, has 
had to discount. .. Even Plato’s Dialogues have 
absurdities in reason and shock the moral sense, yet 
it is confessedly the highest level of human reason in 
the line of spirituality when unaided by alleged reve- 
lation. 


Another scholar, whose work is specially in this field, 
enlarges on the statement by adding that “‘when we con- 
sider what a large number of sayings are recorded of, or 
at least attributed to Christ, it becomes most remarkable 
that in literal truth there is no reason why any of his 
words should pass away in the sense of becoming ob- 
solete.”’ 

We are to consider some of these teachings in later lec- 
tures, especially the teachings regarding God and man and 
the future. Just now it will be enough to point out a few 
characteristics of the teachings of Christ as a whole. 

(a) For one thing they move in the field of daily life and 
not in the field of mere speculation. “This is not to despise 
speculative inquiry, for Christians have been almost as 
noted as others for their speculative systems. It merely 
recognizes that speculation and practical life may be far 
removed from each other. And Jesus spoke in terms of 
daily life. He did not deal with its lesser details alone, 


4 


20 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


since these differ for different men and lands, but he laid 
down the principles on which life is to be lived every- 
where, yet drawing these principles out of actual experi- 
ences through which men were passing. One striking inci- 
dent of this kind may illustrate the whole. A man came 
~ to Jesus‘one day, asking him to force his brother to divide 
up their inheritance more equitably. Jesus declined to in- 
terfere since there were regularly constituted processes for 
accomplishing this, but immediately he laid down the prin- 
ciple which must govern in all such cases. He said, ““Take 
heed and beware of covetousness.’’ Clearly this was the 
root of the difficulty. When he was asked to name the 
most vital laws for life, he named two, those which call 
for the spirit of love both for God and for man. This 
does not tell what to do under special conditions—that 
may need to be settled according to one’s best judgment— 
but it does tell exactly what principle of life one shall 
apply. The accent of Christ’s teaching is not on principles 
“of thought but on moving principles of life. He is not 
dealing with scruples of conscience but with the demands 
of a daily life that must be lived by men on the street, in 
the home, at business and elsewhere. He was himself a 
peripatetic teacher, walking around where men were, sel- 
dom calling them away from their ordinary homes to hear 
him talk, but going here and there with utmost freedom, 
meeting their daily problems and showing them how they 
were to be solved. Only a very small group were asked 
to leave their daily occupations to become constant listeners 
to his teaching, and these were commissioned to tell the 
same truths to others, most of whom in turn would remain 
in their familiar walks of life. | 

(b) But though the teaching is exceedingly practical, it 
deals with the deepest truths that man can consider. An 
American statesman once said that the greatest thought 
that had ever engaged his mind was that of his personal 


IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN 21 


accountability to God. Most men would place the thought 
of God himself at the forefront of their intellectual con- 
cern. It was central in the teaching of Jesus. He talked 
much about God, never in high and stilted terms, yet never 
irreverently and cheaply. Plainly he thought of God as 
his loving Father whose message he was bearing to his 
fellows, and whose work he was to do in the world. A 
later chapter will develop more fully the Christian con- 
ception of God. We notice here merely the fact that it is 
central in the teaching of Christ. 

(c) But beside the practical and profound elements in 
the teaching, there is a marked characteristic of expansion. 
It is germinal and not merely complete. It looks back- 
ward to a long series of human experiences with God and 
the truths that were thus revealed, and it prepared the 
way for a rich development which is found in early and 
later Christian writers. As we shall see when we discuss 
the sacred book of the Faith, the teaching of Jesus con- 
stitutes only a small section of its entire content, yet his 
seal is on the book by his endorsement of the early writ- 
ings which preceded himself and by his inspiration of the 
later writings which followed him. While Jesus was 
essentially an originator, yet he did not fail to recognize 
the teachings which had preceded him and which indicated 
the loving care of the heavenly Father for the world. | 

2. The uniqueness of Christ appears especially in his ye 
person. It was inevitable here also that there should be 
much discussion. The men among whom he first lived 
were Jews and were strongly convinced of the unity of 
God and of his remoteness from mere humanity. Yet they 
came to see in Jesus Christ not merely a perfect man but 
also a manifestation or incarnation of God. ‘The steps 
whereby they reached this conclusion seem to have been 
three. First, they observed that he was teaching them 
something about God which no one else had taught. 


Be THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


Next, they observed that he was himself very like the 
God of whom he taught. Sages in all lands have urged 
that one’s life and one’s teachings should correspond; the 
followers of Christ found that there was an intimate 
agreement between his teaching about God and the char- 
acter and spirit which he himself showed. ‘Then they 
took the amazing third step, to which they were urged by 
the experiences they had with him, and came to believe him 
to be the actual presence and reality of the God of whom 
he had taught them. They did not begin their following 
of him with any smallest idea that this might be true about 
him, nor was it a conclusion reached after centuries of 
myth-making had passed. “They declared their conviction 
in the prime of their own days, when memories of him 
were vivid and multitudes of men before whom he had 
walked and talked were still living. Before their experi- 
ence of him they would have counted any such idea blas- 
phemous and impossible. It was in their experience of 
him that they were brought to their conclusion, a con- 
clusion which is now the conviction of the great body of 
Christian believers. 

The best single phrase covering the subject is a very 
familiar one. “The Christian conviction is that Christ is 
God and man united in one Personality. (a) The idea of 
a god taking human form is not uncommon in other 
faiths, but that is not the Christian conception. In the 
mythological faiths of earlier days it was sometimes taught 
that a god, one among many, had assumed human form 
or appearance for the gaining of certain ends. In the 
Christian Faith the incarnation means that God himself 
has come into real humanity, to make himself known, to 
bring to men that pardon which their sense of sin demands 
and to set before them a perfect example of human living. 
In some other faiths it has been taught that a man, by the 
nobility and sacrifice of his life, has attained to deity. The 


IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN fa 


Christian Faith knows no such teaching. For that Faith 
it is never man who becomes God, but in Jesus Christ God 
has become man. ‘This is not the difficult idea for the 
Christian Faith that it would be for some religions. On 
the one side is the fact that man is made in the image of 
God and that in assuming human nature God is not vio- 
lating his own nature, and on the other side is the fact 
that God is omnipotent in his love and can do whatever 
his love demands for those whom he loves. Between man 
and God there is no such gulf fixed as in some faiths, 
though there is no suggestion in the Christian faith of ulti- 
mate human attainment to divinity. The infinite may 
assume finite reality, though there is no possibility of the 
finite assuming infinity. And if it is urged that incarna- 
tion is not possible to the infinite God, then it must be 
noted that in that case the infinity of God becomes a limita- 
tion upon him. If he is not great enough to enter into 
human life, then it is possible to conceive of a God greater 
than the infinite, one who can be so fully lord of his own 
life that he can become incarnate and yet remain in posses- 
sion of his infinite reality. The conception of infinity and 
that of incarnation are not contradictory; the possibility of 
the latter is included in the former. God may become 
man, though man may not become God. 

So strong was this early impression of the deity of 
Christ that the first difference with which Christian be- 
lievers had to contend was not the denial of his deity but 
of his humanity instead. Some early students asserted 
that Christ had merely seemed to be human and had been 
really nought but God. Of course there came later much 
discussion regarding his true deity. But the main current 
of Christian thinking has asserted the formula just used, 
declaring him both God and man in one personality. The 
evidence for so amazing a position is partly historical, 
partly the outcome of experience, partly the effect of the 


a THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


work he has done. There are some things which only God 
could do and these things the Christian finds that Christ 
does. It was a complaint of the early observers of Jesus 
that he forgave sins, which is a prerogative of God. An- 
other complaint was that he assumed the titles and author- 
ity of God. Both these complaints are accepted by the 
Christian believers as among the true rights and honors of 
Christ. He satisfies their need for God. ‘They find God 
in him. 

There is a common principle of thought which may be 
invoked here: cause must be adequate for effect. Christ 
must have been whatever he needed to be in order to do 
what he did. To count him an ordinary person while he 
accomplishes such extraordinary results seems neither logi- 
cal nor consistent. One of the Christian philosophers 
began his study with an analysis of the facts of the re- 
deemed soul and argued that the Redeemer must be counted 
adequate to produce that result. He found that no one 
short of God could have accomplished the work which 
Christ did and does accomplish. 

(b) At the same time, the conviction of the true and 
full humanity of Christ is very dear to Christian believers. 
His life on the earth was undoubtedly that of a human 
being. He was not a seeming man but a very real one, 
with human body and growing mind, and therefore he 
understands ordinary human needs and desires. He brings 
a great hope and assurance to men of our own sort in his 
showing that sin and wrong and selfishness are no neces- 
sary part of human life. He lived his own rich full life 
without stain of any sort, yet he mingled freely with the 
world and took his part in human activities. Until his 
’ public life demanded all his time, he did the work of a 
carpenter, and in all his teaching he shows himself close in 
spirit with the working world, though his concern is not 
for men as workers or as rulers or as masters and servants, 


IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN 25 


but for men as men. He was great enough to understand 
all the great, and humble enough to be a brother to the 
lowly. We know from him that sin is no part of true 
human nature and that it may be wholly eradicated from 
us without destroying or maiming our human personality. 
Indeed, the great argument for Jesus which satisfies many 
hearts is the fact that he did not merely tell men how to 
live their lives but lived the right life before them. The 
Christian scheme of life is not a mere theory. It has been 
lived. It might be a new thing for a man to-day to live 
that life, but it would not be new in the world, for Christ 
lived it. And in that fact any man can find inspiration 
and live it himself. 

(c) For it is a vital part of the Christian conviction 
about Christ that his life has not ceased from the earth. 
At the end of his incarnate life he was cruelly put to death, 
yet it was a self-surrender as truly as an unjust execution, 
and after it was over he resumed his life and has never 
surrendered it again. “To the Christian, Christ is a living 
fact. He did live, but he does live. ‘There is a familiar 
story of a great Christian preacher in England that one 
day he was writing his sermon for the celebration of the 
resurrection of Christ and came naturally to the words, 
“Christ is living,’ when suddenly they seemed to leap 
from the page into his very heart. He rose from his desk 
and walked back and forth in his study saying aloud and 
joyously, “Christ is living! Christ ys living!’’ It had 


long been his faith, but that day it became a.great and 


inspiring reality to him. In some Christian churches, on 
every Sabbath day a hymn is sume which celebrates the 
resurrection of Christ. Indeed, the very Sabbath itself 
is to the Christian a reminder of that great fact. In the 
faith from which Christianity makes its historical descent, 
the day of rest is conceived as closing the week, as God 
closed his activity in the creation of the world; but in the 


, eet &.. 
> 


26 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


Christian Faith the day was early conceived as opening the 
week, as Christ began a new course of life for all believers 
by his resurrection from the dead on that day. 

In a later lecture we shall observe one effect of this assur- 
ance about Christ upon the Christian conception of God, 
giving to it one of its very richest aspects in what is known 
as the doctrine of the Trinity. This is not a mere meta- 
physical conception. Instead, it is a purely practical way 
of dealing with certain great and undeniable experiences 
and facts with which the Christian is faced as soon as he 
really reaches his conviction about Christ. The doctrine 
originated in the constraint on thoughtful men for the 
rationalizing of their total experience, and something like 
it continues to be a necessity for such men. ‘To the adher- 
ents of some other faiths the idea of the Trinity is 
objectionable, because they come upon it purely intellec- 
tually (and there of course it must ultimately justify 
itself), but if it is approached as the early Christian be- 
lievers approached it, from the side of experience, and is: 
used as a clue to the labyrinth of experience with God, it 
is not so difficult. Moslem believers in late years testify 
that they have found peace in the fact of the Trinity . 
exactly as the early Christians did, by finding Christ real 
to themselves and so being led to the idea of such a rich 
divine personality as the doctrine suggests. [hey had 
supposed it was equivalent to the idea of three gods, an 
impossible conception, or they had seen in it the impossible 
equation that three and one are equal. Their experience 
with Christ has made the fact of the Trinity helpful to 
them, as it has been to multitudes of believers since it came 
into the knowledge of men. 

The Christian Faith offers this unique Person to a world 
whose largest single evil is its low estimate of personality. 
Everywhere individual men, groups, races, are looked down 
upon by other individuals, races and groups. Men are 


IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN 27 


rated lower than animals or things at many points of the 
world. It is the evil of the present industrial system that 
machines become masters of men and the human factor is 
discounted. It is the evil of much of the social organiza- 
tion of the world that men are made to do the work of 
animals in order to gain a daily livelihood. They are 
measured by their muscles and not by their manhood. The 
sharpest complaint that can be made of international rela- 
tions is that so many programs proceed upon assumption 
of the inferiority of some nations and lead to a disregard 
of sheer human rights. And within nations, certain groups 
are rated too low in the scale to receive the equal treatment 
that manhood inherently deserves. “The world’s standard 
of manhood is low and there is needed a new estimate of 
human worth. The Christian religion centers on a Person 
who. constitutes in turn a norm of personality. It sets 
this Person over against all institutions and organizations 
and programs and proposes to the world that personality 
be given the supreme place in all thinking. That Christen- 
dom has failed here is better known among Christians than 
by any other men, but what Christendom needs is what 
the whole world needs, and the level of human value must 
be lifted everywhere if it is to be lifted anywhere. ~— 

The Christian Faith bears testimony that the chief 
reality in the world-order is personality. If men hold 
each other in contempt, at least Almighty God does not 
hold them so, for he counted it suitable to his own great- 
ness to enter into human life and to establish for men a 
norm for manhood. When there grows into common 
human thinking this estimate of human worth, there will 
be changes of unmeasured value to the world. 

Christian believers do not ask other men: to begin in 
their thought of this unique Person where they themselves 
stand, but to begin where men began with him at the ® 
first, to accept him for what he seems to be at any point, 


28 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


to follow faithfully his program of life and to give his 
teaching and personal influence the weight they deserved. 
They are then assured that he will prove himself to others, 
as he has already proved himself to his followers, as more 
than man and yet fully and truly human, 


Il 


The second gift which the Christian Faith offers to the 
world is a Unique Book—the sacred book of the religion. 
It is closely connected with the Unique Person because 
Christ is central and normative in it. This book, called 
in Christian language simply ““The Book,’’ though it con- 
sists of several parts and three score booklets, has had an © 
interesting history. {It is not the work of any one writer; 
indeed, some of the writers are not known, and the fact 


LN ng (.does not trouble Christian believers in the least, for they 


do not gain their assurance of its value from any opinion 
of its origin, but from their experience of its vitality, an 
experience which is constantly renewed with each new 
generation of men to whom it comes._) The writing of 
this book covered between twelve and fifteen hundred 
years, though its story begins with the creation of the 
world and ends with the close of the first generation of 
the Christian Faith. It is naturally devoted chiefly to an 
account of religious development before and after Christ. 
There are three distinct sections: one tells briefly the move- 
ments of preparation for the coming of Christ, especially 
as that preparation lay in the history of the Jewish people; 
the second tells the brief story of the life of Christ on the 
earth, four short accounts being given of it; the third con- 
tains a brief account of the beginning of the Christian 
enterprise after the resurrection of Jesus, partly in the form 
of a record of one of the principal leaders of the early 
Christian movement, and partly in the form of letters 
written by different writers to new converts, explaining 


IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN 29 


more fully the meaning of the Christian message and the 
method of the Christian life. The books which make up 
the Book are all small and the complete volume is quickly 
read. ‘There is a singular unity running through the long 
story but there are also marks of progress and of differences, 
such as might be expected in a growing religious experi- 
ence. Io Christian believers this progress seems to be not 
from error to truth so much as from partial light to fuller. 
Throughout their acceptance of the Book, Christians make 
Christ their norm, as in all other matters. 

For most Christians two words express their thought of 
their sacred Book. They speak of its revelation and of its 
inspiration. [he words mean two quite different things. 
(a) In certain senses it is all a revelation because it makes 
God and man, duty and the future, known, as they were 
not known before nor are known elsewhere. Yet some 
parts of the book contain truths about God and man and 
the future which are not learned elsewhere, and in this 
fuller sense it is called a revelation. It has come in various 
ways, some of them most natural, as when one writer set 
himself to learn the accurate facts about the life of Christ 
and recorded them without comment. Some ways of 
revelation have been much more unusual, as when men 
had visions and announced their results as the voice of 
God. This is what might have been expected, for God 
makes himself known in the common things of life as 
well as in its unusual experiences. In making God seem 
real Jesus made more use of common facts, such as flowers 
and birds and household practices, than of exceptional 
things. Yet he did not hesitate to find the hand of God 
in calamities nor to seek his presence in remote and unusual 
places. The Book could hardly be true to Christian ideas 
if it did not find space for both ordinary and extraordi- 
nary events and experiences. In both the ordinary and 
the extraordinary the revelation of God will be found, 


30... THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


(b) When Christian believers speak of their sacred book 
as inspired they are not expressing merely a theory but 
are trying to describe a fact. The Bible has an influence 
and makes an impression which is not apparent in other 
books. Something gives it that unusual power, a power 
which results in an impulse to become like the God whom 
the Book reveals. It is a Book which good men use to 
make bad men good, in which troubled people find the 
comfort they need; a Book which has the ability to make 
men accept all manner of strain for the sake of the good 
of others. Such a book cannot be fairly considered com- 
monplace. It is the part of reason to seek the grounds of 
this difference from books which have not such power. 
The reason the Christian believer finds is that God has 
spoken in and through the sacred Book in a peculiar and 
definite sense. All believers have not agreed on the way 
whereby this power has been granted to it. Some have 
found the explanation in its words, some in its ideas, some 
in its spirit. But all Christians agree that the Book itself 
has a power which sets it on a summit in relation to other 
books. 

The attitude of the Christian Faith toward its sacred 
book is different at several points from the attitude assumed 
by other faiths toward their own sacred literature. This 
literature is much smaller in Christianity than in other 
faiths. Moreover, it is held to have power and spirituality 
in any language quite as truly and fully as in its original 
tongues. Indeed, it has had far wider sweep and much 
greater influence in languages that did not exist when it 
was written than it ever had in the original tongues. 
Nothing like it has ever been known in the field of litera- 
ture. [he Bible has existed, in whole or in part, in some- 
thing more than seven hundred different languages and 
dialects, and it is now in active use in more than six hun- 
dred such tongues, the others having become obsolete. It 


IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN 31 


has not been put into these tongues by their own usets as 
a gift to literature, but by its own adherents for the sake 
of its religious value. It has been Christians who have 
been back of all movements to make the Bible known, 
and their purpose has been the religious good of those to 
whom they gave it. In many instances the believers have 
learned languages for the sake of putting their sacred book 
into them. Sometimes they have even reduced languages 
to writing, and taught an entire tribal group to read, in 
order that they might read this book. “They have not done 
this narrowly. No serious effort has been made to propa- 
gate any considerable body of religious literature among 
the people of Christendom by adherents of other faiths, 
but there is much of that literature which is available in 
the tongues of Christendom through the efforts of adher- 
ents of the Christian Faith and believers in the sacred Book 
of that Faith. 

It is quite impossible to suppose that such a book has 
no special character. An eminent Christian scholar who 
became one of the highest authorities on the original texts 
of the Christian Bible, handling it by purely literary and 
historical methods, bore this testimony: ‘I have studied © 
the Bible for years like other books and so I have found 
it is not like other books.’’ ‘The Christian attitude to- 
ward it has ranged all the way from a kind of superstition 
to a merely high estimate of its value, but nowhere is it 
discounted among believers. It is too matter-of-fact in 
itself to permit the superstitious attitude to be long main- 
tained, and it is too forceful in the lives of men to permit 
the merely high estimate to be consistently maintained. 
The middle ground is the generally accepted one among 
Christian believers. This finds the Bible a record of the 
way in which men have searched for God but more largely 
still a book in which is recorded the revelation of himself 


BV THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


by God to men, a book which can best be described as an 
inspired revelation. 

The greatest achievements of this Book do not lie in 
the far past. They are of this day as well, and the Book 
has never had so wide a circulation nor such wide usage 
as to-day. It still surprises those who come upon it for 
the first time. “The German poet, Heinrich Heine, was 
changed in his last days from being an opponent of the 
Christian Faith to a warm adherent of it. He has told 
the story of his change. 

Neither vision nor ecstasy, neither voice from 
heaven nor bodeful dream, has pointed the way of 
salvation to me. I owe my enlightenment quite 
simply to the reading of a book. Of a book, you 
say? Yes, and it is an old and homely book, plain 
as nature herself, a work-a-day, unpretentious look- 
ing book—and the book is sometimes called quite 
simply The Book, The Bible. Rightly it is also 
called Holy Writ. He who has lost his God may 
find Him again in this Volume and he who has never 
known Him will there be met by the breath of the 
divine Word. 

When Christian believers are asked for books on the 
inspiration of their Bible, they often reply that the Bible 
itself is the only satisfactory book on the subject. The 
argument for its inspiration has at the last to be gathered” 
from itself. Inspiration is a quality which must be dis- 
played before it can be admitted. If the Bible did not 
reveal in itself traits which set it apart from other books, 
if men who give it an opportunity to influence them <éd 
did not find it making God more real, if it did not win 
its way purely by moral force—then no outside argument 
could convince an inquirer. ‘The largest single agency for 
the publishing of the Bible has in its charter the provision 
that it must publish the Book without note or comment, 


IN ITS HISTORICAL ORIGIN 33 


but must leave it to explain and approve itself. Yet it 
bears much study and interpretation. It has been re- « 
marked that the power of the Bible to survive its com- 
mentators is an additional proof of its divine origin! 
Still, it is suggestive that it is the theme of some hundreds ” 
of thousands of sermons and class groups each week, 
yielding every year some new material for thoughtful 
minds. It is the constant storm center of discussion and 
criticism. Some ideas about it have been changed by re- 
cent study. Some of these new ideas may need to be _ 
changed in turn. But the main fact abides, that the 
sacred Book of the Christian Faith brings to men an idea 
of God and humanity, of present duty and future hopes, 
of earthly life and life beyond the earth, which satisfies _, 
their hearts. All that Christians ask for it is that it be 
given an opportunity to approve itself as the word of 
God to the heart of man. The Book is available for the 
observation and analysis of any reader. It asks only that 
fairness which is the right of any serious book. Nothing 
is asked of any reader but that he shall take the Book 
as it offers itself, as an honest book of religion. No vote 
of church or council has given it its high place among 
Christian believers. Long and continuous experience with 
it has convinced its adherents of its value. “They believe 
such experience would convince others. 

_ This sacred Book of the Christian Faith is offered to a 
world of divided mind as a unifying center of thought. 
There is no suggestion of uniformity of thought. No 
clamp is to be put on the minds of its readers. Some- 
times adverse attention is called to the wide differences of 
opinion regarding the Bible which exist among Christian 
believers. Such differences are part of the freedom which 
the Book itself gives to its adherents. It would be deadly 
if any book offered itself in religion as a limitation on 
the freedom of the mind. Instead, the Bible offers itself 


34 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


as an inspiration to the freest thinking. But in the midst 
of that freedom there is an underlying unity, a unifying 
center of thought. Already it is true that on the special 
day of Christian worship in nearly all the lands of the 
earth, more people gather around this one Book, to read 
it and to hear its ideas expounded, than gather around 
any other common center. ‘Their thoughts are their own 
but they lie within:a broad circle of agreements. Such a 
unifying center is needed in the divided mind of the 
world to-day, bringing men to thoughts which they 
share with their fellows of other lands and races, guid- 
ing them to an agreement which shall be free but real. 
This agreement is to be found in the wide field of reli- 
gion where men think of God and their relation to him 
and to each other. It admits no bondage of mind, no 
uniformity of thought or expression, but it needs some- 
where a center, a common source of inspiration. Chris- 
tian believers find such a common center in the sacred 
Book of their Faith, and they offer it to the world as 
that unifying center of thought. 


CHAPTER III 
THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 


It is a familiar fact in nature that some plants have a 
double tap-root, drawing their strength through both its 
branches. The Christian Faith is such a plant. It draws 
its strength from history and from a constantly renewed 
experience. In the preceding lecture attention was called 
to the historical origin of the Faith, particularly its his- 
torical Figure, Jesus Christ, and its historical book, the 
Bible. .In a later lecture there will be discussion of the 
institution in which the Faith expresses itself in history, 
the Christian Church. Some Christian adherents find in 
the Church a further historical source of the Faith, while 
most adherents see in it no originating source but solely 
an expression and embodiment of Christianity. All 
agree that the Faith runs back for its historical origin to 
the two factors already discussed. 


I 


In this lecture we are to discuss the second main source 
of the Christian conviction—its perennial origin in per- 
sonal experience and in a corporate experience built up 
through centuries of history. We have already noted 
that these two lines of origin are not disconnected. What 
we call history is the record of what men have experienced 
in the past, and present experience will soon pass into his- 
tory for the guidance of later men. Yet other elements 
than religious experience enter into history, and much 


a5 


36 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION « 


that men of one age experience must be reconsidered by 
later ages. The abiding inheritance of experience is that 
body of material which has proved valid for successive 
generations and through differing conditions. But noth- 
ing can ever seem vital to any generation which cannot 
be reproduced in its own life in all its essential elements. 
’ When a religion becomes entirely historical and does not 
make itself real in living men, it has already died out of 
human life. 

There can be no explanation of the vigorous Christian 
movement of the present day apart from this habit of the 
Faith of reproducing itself in living men. If there were 
not some millions of men around the world who are 
finding in the Christian religion the supply of their deepest 
needs, men to whom the Christian Faith is a present, liv- 
ing reality which they wish to share with others, there 
could be no sustaining force for such a movement of ex- 
pansion as exists to-day. Such an expansion would be 
doubly difficult without an historical background, to be 
sure, but it would be wholly impossible if there were 
nothing but that background and if there were not a 
vital experience of religion in the hearts of present be- 
lievers. The problem for observers of the Christian Faith 
is not to explain its historical origin but to explain its 
renewed origin in each generation. Sometimes it is said 
in non-Christian lands that Christianity has lost its vital- 
ity in the lands which have professed it in history. “The 
answer is not far to seek: if it had really done so for one 
generation, its movement for expansion would cease; in- 
stead, the movement was never so vigorous as now. The’ 
history of the Faith would make it old; the renewed ex- | 
perience of it in each generation keeps it always young. 

For two major reasons, any religion needs a source in 
fresh personal experience. (a) Only such experience 
makes heroism possible, and no religion can long command 


*“ IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 37 


allegiance without a call to heroism. Few men do any 
heroic thing simply because their fathers had certain ex- 
periences. In some way they must gain a vivid sense of 
being the children of their fathers and of sharing the 
great experiences in their own lives. Unless they are mere 
hirelings, men do not fight for a land for which they 
have no personal regard. The love of the land must 
have entered into the fiber of their own beings. And men 
do not die for a religion nor surrender everything in the 
effort to propagate it unless it has laid irresistible hold 
on their own spirits. Martyrdom does not prove that the 
martyr is right; he may die for a wrong cause. But 
martyrdom does prove that the martyr is sincere and that 
he is terribly in earnest. One cannot argue for the martyr’s 
cause on the basis of his death, but can argue for the 
martyr himself on that basis. He has found something that 
is worth more to him than his physical life, something he 
is more sure of than of his desire to live in the world. 
There are men who do not understand why American or 
Western Christians will die for the cause of Christianity 
in India or China, as not a few have done. But such 
men do not realize how deep is the personal experience of 
these Christian believers nor how deep is their love for 
the lands in whose behalf they died. In all lands, na- 
tionals as well have laid down their lives for a faith which 
they had newly received because it had become more dear 
to them than life itself. 

(b) Nothing but personal experience can explain the 
Jong endurance which a vital faith requires of its adher- 
ents. Martyrdom is often easier than the abiding loyalty 
of daily duty. Religion must sustain its believer in the 
crises of his life, but it must sustain him also in the com- 
monplace demands of his ordinary life. This is especially 
true of the Christian Faith. One of the greatest Chris- 
tian poets opens one of his poems with the line: ‘How 


38 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


hard it is to be a Christian—hard for you and me!” 
There are many reasons for the fact, but it has never been 
pretended that being a true and worthy Christian is easy. 
When it is remembered that the Founder of the Faith paid 
for his loyalty by death on a cross, it can hardly be sup- 
posed that he would lay out for his followers a smooth 
path. He forewarned them that there would be hard- 
ships in the way. This is true in all lands, not merely 
lands where Christians are yet few. But there are more 
Christian believers in the world now than there ever 
have been before, men and women trying day by day to 
accept the duties of their Faith and to practice its precepts. 
This would be impossible to them if their religion were 
not a vital and personal reality. It sometimes happens 
that Christian adherents who count themselves believers in 
one land lose their belief when they go to another land and 
find themselves set in the midst of non-Christian groups. 
They then reveal that their faith had not yet become a 
truly personal one; it was altogether social, depending for 
its vitality on the social group. Such adherents never 
form the bulwark of any faith. 

Christian believers make much of this element of per- 
sonal appreciation of great objective realities. A man is 
not made a Christian by accepting the historical facts of 
the Christian Faith nor by admiring the heroes of its 
past. One becomes a Christian only when these historical 
realities have become dominating forces in his own life. 
In the later weeks of his life on earth, Christ once asked 
his disciples about the opinions that had been currently 
formed about himself; but when they had replied in vari- 
ous terms, he suddenly swung the question upon them- 
selves and said, ‘“‘But who say ye that I am?’’ And when 
one of the disciples replied with a strong confession of 
faith, Christ expressed great joy in it and indicated that 
this marked an epoch in his program. Mere general opin- 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN a7 


ion, no matter how accurate, or merely social practice, no 
matter how. correct, may leave the individual untouched. 
But when the objective realities have become matters of 
personal experience there is provision for heroic endurance 
and for aggressive zeal. In a conspicuous place in the city 
of Oxford, England, is an ornate monument erected as 
a memorial to three men who were martyred there for their 
Christian conviction. They died cheerfully, for one re- 
minded the others that the fire that burned them would 
light a blaze that would never be quenched. It was a 
small thing to them that they should die. The great 
thing for them was that their conviction should con- 
tinue in the world. Such self-surrender would be impos- 
sible apart from deep personal experience, and it is just 
this experience which keeps the Faith alive in the world. 


II 

Christian experience emerges in two forms. It begins 
with the first contact of men with the Figure of Jesus 
Christ, gaining in cumulative force as generations have 
succeeded in that contact. Its other form is the experience 
of living believers in this day.- Neither the historical mind 
nor the modern mind can be considered the only one in 
such a matter. No man can suppose that he has experi- 
enced the whole of so great a fact as any religion, certainly 
not the Christian Faith. He may expect to find his own 
experience checked, corrected, enriched by the experience 
of others from earlier times and from his own day. On 
the other hand, any earnest man is sure to find himself in- 
terpreting the experience of history in terms of his own 
_ experience, 

The two forms of experience have different functions 
in religion. Recorded, or historical, experience tends to 
stabilize the Faith, giving check to vagaries and follies. 
Living, or current, experience tends to keep the Faith vital 


40 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


and fresh. There is record of a distinguished convert to 
Christianity which illustrates this fact. Dr. K. C. Chat- 
terjee had been educated under Christian auspices without 
adopting the Christian Faith. He had naturally learned 
the accepted phrases of the Faith but merely as expressions 
of an historical experience. He came, however, to the full 
and personal acceptance of the Christian religion in his 
own life. Immediately, as he gives the record, the his- 
torical phrases sprang into full life for him. They came 
to mean to him what they had meant to men long ago 
when the phrases were new. They were no longer stabil- 
izing terms, the deposit of generations of believing. “They 
became the living realities of a living man. This has hap- 
pened to many men. On the other hand, the tendency 
of individual experience to become unsocial and narrow is 
checked by a wealth of historic experience which has stood 
the test of time and of varied conditions. 

Christian believers call men of other faiths to consider 
this wealth of historic experience as a contribution to per- 
sonal life, but they set no standard upon other men, lim- 
iting the personal experience they may receive. Each 
race, each nation, each man, must be left free to receive 
this rich and germinal Faith in personal ways. ‘Then, 
having received it, and having found it vital and inspiring, 
each will find awaiting the wider historical experience 
which becomes a common heritage of Christian believers. 


Ill 


It may be asked whether the experiences of Christians 
create their conviction or whether instead their convic- 
tion creates their experiences. Do they find the Chris- 
tian Faith true because they wish it to be so, or do they 
accept it as true because they have found it to be true? 
The reply is that both are true. In any sphere of life 
experience and conviction react upon each other, now 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 41 


one in the ascendancy, now the other. (a) Recall the 
scientific method. An investigator lights upon a theory, 
the result of some experience and more speculation. 
Then he experiments with the theory, acting all the 
while as though it were true. As the experiments con- 
firm it, his conviction deepens. After a time, ex- 
perience and conviction become virtually identical, each 
reacting upon the other. Many times the Christian 
Faith is compared to the hypothesis of a scientist, 
because it is a widely accepted working theory of life. 
There is truth in this figure of speech, if it is not pressed 
too far. There are working hypotheses in the scientific 
field which have become assured convictions; they are now 
taken as established facts. Such a fact Christian adherents 
hold their Faith to be. 

(b) There is no doubt, however, that Christian con- 
viction helps to determine Christian experience in many 
cases. Indeed, part of the conviction is frankly used to 
make troublesome experience endurable. Here, for ex- 
ample, is the conviction about God which Christ gave 
his followers, the conviction that God is a loving Heavenly 
Father. Now, no Christian finds life just what he would 
expect it to be in the world of a loving Father. Sorrows 
and trials, difficulties and dangers, disappointments and 
denials, are as much his portion as that of unbelievers. A 
well-known Christian saying is that “‘all things work 
together for good to them that love God.’ But no 
Christian can pretend that this has yet proved true in his 
own life, and he knows it has not yet proved true in the 
lives of those whom he observes. Yet most believers as- 
sert it without hesitation, not because they have experi- 
enced it, but because their conviction assures them of a 
principle of life which is involved, and which is greater 
than any apparent exception to it. If a man looks on the 
sea and it appears entirely level to him, he does not on 


42 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


that account consider that it is perfectly level. He knows 
that in spite of appearances it shares the rotundity of the 
earth and he corrects his experience by his wider assurance. 
A Christian believes that a loving heavenly Father con- 
trols the world and is able to bring all things into co- 
operation for the good of those who Jove him, and that 
he has already done it in some cases and will ultimately 
do it in all cases. The conviction corrects the first im- 
pression of experience. 

(c) However, any corrective conviction must itself 
be the outcome of experience jn clearer and less biased 
forms. It is the expression of more trustworthy experi- 
ence, wider, more reliable, less confused by personal con- 
sideration. And there frequently occurs a revision of con- 
viction on the ground of undespiable and unexplainable 
experience. Convictions are apt to become purely in- 
tellectual, whereas experience ifthe expression of the whole 
personality. [When convictions cannot be put into active 
and helpful practice they lose their value for religion, cer- 
tainly for the Christian religion, Some one has said, 
“Christianity is not primarily a thing to be thought about, 
but a thing to be lived.’” To be thought about, certainly, 
but not primarily. And if conviction ever conflicts with 
actual life, it is sure to be modified. The great central 
Christian convictions have passed through this test. Uhey 
have been lived. They are being lived to-day. 

(d) This relation between experience and conviction 
reminds us of another important fact in the Christian 
Faith—namely, that it claims to be an experience of ob- 
jective reality. The principal element in Christian belief 
is not the experience itself but an assurance that this is 
an experience of something. It is not an illusory idea 
with no object. It has been tested in many ways. Chris- 
tian adherents believe the rationality of the universe is 
involved in its accuracy. The inner life is very real to 


| 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 43 


the Christian but it has wide implications and contacts 
with realities lying far beyond itself. God is not con- 
ceived as subjective but as objectively real. His existence 
and character are wholly independent of what men think 
about him, as the earth is independent in its existence and 
its laws of what men think about it. The earth was 
round all the time that men thought it was flat. The 
sun was a great orb millions of miles from the earth even 
when men were counting it a small object a few miles away. 
Their thoughts did not change the objective reality, but 
they did affect deeply their own relation to life. What 
we think is very important, but the principal thing is that 
our thinking shall correspond to a reality which is inde- 
pendent of our thinking but of which we cannot be inde- 
pendent. It is what a man experiences, not his mere ex- 
perience itself, which is vital for the permanence of re- 
ligion. This is the protection which the Christian Faith 
has against mere rationalism. [he reason becomes an 
agency of truth, not an originator of truth; it is man’s 
highest power, because it is man’s means of discovering 
truth. It isa seeker, not a maker, of reality. Anselm, an 
early philosopher of the Faith, expressed the normal atti- 
tude of Christian adherents in saying, ‘It seems to me a 
failure in reasonable conduct that one who is confirmed 
in faith should not seek to understand what he believes.” 

(e) The total content of personal Christian experi- 
ence cannot be wholly described simply because it is per- 
sonal. The objective realities with which the Faith is 
concerned and around which it centers must be the same 
for all, yet each person experiences their meaning for him- 
self. It is as though a thousand men were set in order 
surrounding a mountain, each of the thousand facing it 
in his own position. All will be seeing and considering 
the same object with equal honesty and eagerness to know 
it as it is, and yet no two of the thousand will have ex- 


44 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


actly the same point of view nor get exactly the same 
idea of the reality. Each will have something to 
contribute to a total knowledge of the common object, 
and each will be helped if it should prove possible 
to take the point of view of many others. Such an illus- 
tration may throw light on the differences among equally 
earnest Christian believers who narrate their experiences. 
There is an underlying agreement and a surface difference. 
Since the experiences are of a common reality, they have 
much in common. Since the experiences are personal, they 
have wide variety. No attempt is made in this lecture to 
describe the total Christian experience. There are, how- 
ever, some elements in all personal experience out of which 
the perennial conviction of the Christian Faith issues, to 
which we may now turn our attention. 


IV 


There are at least five elements in personal Christian 
experience which are so nearly universal that they may 
safely be offered to any person who will come into such 
relation to the Christian Faith as to develop them in his 
own life. The normal Christian experience includes: 
fellowship with God in Christ, freedom from fear, ‘a sense 
of peace with a holy God, ‘an enlargement of life, and a 
love for others which is not limited by land or race. “The 
order of these items is purely arbitrary. Some would put 
any one of them first in the list, and the record of Chris- 
tian lives would justify saying of any one of them that it 
is the central fact. The Christian Faith seeks to bring to 
its adherents whatever they need for fullness in life. 
Whether or not they receive its gifts depends on their 
readiness to receive them. If any man has a sense of need 
which lies deep in his life, he may come to the Christian 
religion with assurance that it is the supply of such a 
need, whether it pertains to his own life or to his relation 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 45 


to his fellows or to his relation to God. ‘There are mil- 
lions of Christian believers to-day, and there have been 
uncounted millions in the generations since the founding 
of the Faith, who have tested it for the supply of their 
needs and have found it sufficient. One of the passages 
in the Bible which has been most often approved in the 
lives of Christians is that which says that God shall sup- 
ply every need according to his riches in glory by Jesus 
Christ. 

We are now to discuss in fuller detail the five charac- 
teristic experiences of the Christian, out of which grows 
his conviction of the reality of the Christian Faith. 


Vv 


1. Christian experience includes a sense of fellowship 
with God in Christ. In the next lecture we shall consider 
the age-long quest for God on which the human soul so 
deeply depends, and we shall then present the Christian — 
conception of God in detail. In the Christian system God , 
is declared to be personal and so to be within human 
knowledge, though not within human comprehension 
Such a conception makes possible the incarnation and the 
direct contact of God with human spirits. Indeed, this 
conception shows the truth which underlies all earnest 
efforts to bring the deity near by means of idols and other 
images. Few men can be wholly satisfied with the vague, 
remote deity of pure speculation or the deity whose idea 
is reached at the end of philosophical argument. ‘They 
want to think of God as near and helpful. In short, 
they want fellowship with the God whom they worship. 

Christians find such fellowship in Christ as the mani- 
festation, the incarnation of God. A disciple once said 
to Christ that if he could be sure of the Father he would 
be satisfied. Jesus at once said to him that whoever had 
seen him had seen the Father. And men have been find- 


46 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


ing God in Christ ever since that day. It is not by magic 
nor in mystery, though it is spiritual. In their knowledge 
of Christ believers have felt that they know God. He is 
like Christ; he can be loved and trusted as Christ could 
be; he can be realized in his nearness as Christ was. 

The sense of fellowship with God is not peculiar to 
the Christian Faith. Many religions have mystics who 
pass under certain conditions into mystical insight and 
apprehend God at first hand. “These mystical experiences 
are all broadly alike, usually following the same course 
whether in the Christian believer or in others. “They are 
authoritative in their field, also, and must always be re- 
ceived with appreciation. However, the Christian Faith 
rather avoids than seeks them in their usual form. An 
early apostle had this mystical power and rejoiced in it 
for himself, but felt that it endangered the true democracy 
of the Christian Faith unless it was carefully safeguarded. 
It is not an experience which seems open to everybody, 
but only to those of a special type of mind. ‘The true and 
vital experience of fellowship with God which Christ 
offers is open to all sorts and conditions of men, learned 
and unlearned, rich and poor, practical and mystical. It 
grows out of a sense of God’s interest in the daily affairs 
of life. Christ once used the surprising Oriental figure of 
speech, which may be taken with all literalness, that the 
hairs of men’s heads are numbered before the eyes of God, 
and that even a sparrow cannot fall to the ground with- 
out his knowledge. The sense of God’s care and concern 
is not reserved for the selected few, but belongs of right 
to every Christian believer. (It requires no isolation from 
the ordinary affairs of life, no mysterious practices nor 
hypnotic exercises but merely acceptance of the reality of 
Christ and his manifestation of God. 

It has not always been easy for Christians to realize 
the simplicity and naturalness of this fellowship. In 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 47 
most ages there have been men who felt that they must 
make of it something mysterious and exceptional. So 
there have been Christian monks and anchorites, desert 
dwellers who have sought to find God by going away 
from the usual haunts of men, becoming holy by becom- 
ing separated from men, instead of becoming holy by 
being separated to God in the midst of men. During the 
lifetime of Christ he was once contrasted with his fore- 
runner, at just this point. The forerunner, John the Bap- 
tist, lived the life of an ascetic, whereas Christ lived a 
social life. It has never been necessary to get away from 
life to be worthy of the God of life. 

, 2. Largely because of this fellowship with God, the 
Christian experience involves release from the sense of 
fear. An eminent English scholar once said that if he 
could ask the Sphinx one question it would be this: ‘‘Is 
the universe friendly?’’ “To many men it seems un- 
friendly. 

(a) Savage life is always in dread of evil spirits. 
Systems of primitive worship are largely devoted to pla- 
cating angry spirits or defeating the purposes of malev- 
olent or whirhsical deities. Even after a much higher 
stage of religious development has been reached the same 
fear often appears, and the testimony of many new con- 
verts to Christianity is that its largest blessing has been 
their release from fear of such influences. Strangely 
enough, the Christian Faith does not deny the existence 
of spirits, good and evil, but it places them wholly under 
the control of God, so that they either do his loving will 
or are constantly checked by that will. In either case, 
they can do no harm to those who trust God. Part of a 
familiar hymn, taken originally from the German, ex- 
presses most Christian thinking: ‘And though this world 
with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not 


48 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 
fear, for God hath willed his truth shall triumph through 


us.’ Whatever may be said of adverse forces in the uni- 
verse, they would be subject to personality. If they are 
personal, then they would be subject in turn to greater 
personality than their own. The Christian Faith in the 
personal God, and in the place of personality in the moral 
order, carries with it the assurance of complete mastery 
of all adverse forces, whether personal or not. Multitudes 
of believers have found release from fear by committing 
themselves to this assurance. So complete has been the 
release that in the normal Christian mind the whole mat- 
ter of evil spirits has become academic and negligible. 

(b) But the passing of fear of evil spirits does not 
mean the ending of fear in human life. Every thought- 
ful man knows that life is full of dangerous elements, 
elements which hold the future of any day in an unstable 
equilibrium. Each man is increasingly dependent on forces 
which he cannot control—other men, even other nations, 
conditions of the world about him, the physical world 
of storm and flood and disaster, and the social world of a 
closely interlocked human interest. Words and deeds 
‘may have farreaching consequences. No man can know 
what the morrow may bring forth. Not even the bravest 
can keep his heart steady at all times by any power of his 
own. Either he must have few interests or care little for 
them, if he does not sometimes dread conditions which 
may arise. “The fact appears even more markedly when 
one faces the larger conditions of the world as a whole. 
The plans of wise men go astray, the schemes for protec- 
tion of men and nations seem inadequate or even trifling. 
How much damage a misstep or a malevolent decision 
can do has been sadly proven to us in recent years. Life 
has become perilously interwoven, so that men in a far 
nation hold in their hands the destinies and happiness 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 49 


of our homes. How shall a man face life as it actually 
is, and not have his hours of fear? 

Some release from this persistent or recurrent sense of 
fear is demanded for efficient living as well as for peace 
within one’s own life. Three proposals have been made 
for securing steadiness and poise. The first proposal is 
that one shall withdraw from the dangerous elements of 
living. Men would go away from society and nations 
would return to hermit or isolated life. Or else, men 
would fatuously deny the reality of the adverse conditions 
and nations would give themselves over to blind optim- 
ism. Each would live for his own pleasure, living for 
the day as though there were no future and no threaten- 
ing danger in occupations. In one way or another the 
dangerous elements are to be forgotten and so fear is to 
be allayed. The second proposal is that of the Stoics. 
Men are to brace themselves against these evils of life by 
a kind of cynicism that refuses to be mastered. ‘The evils 
cannot be escaped, but men can keep their unconquerable 
souls. They can accept the evils as fate, part of a prede- 
termined order to which they must submit, but always 
proudly. Many men in all lands pride themselves on this 
method of facing life. This, it is said, would cure our 
fears. 

The other proposal is that of Christianity. It in- 
volves an open-eyed and unhesitating acceptance of life 
as life actually is, with no suppression of human impulses. 
But it involves also an assurance of forces greater than 
the adverse ones, ultimate forces of righteousness—in 
short, the Christian religion proposes that men escape 
from fear by faith in the presence and power of a loving 
and righteous God. There are evils in the world; it is 
never quite honest to deny their reality. They can break 
us; we are never quite ingenuous when we deny it. But) 
they are not the ultimate forces and they cannot break us 


50 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


finally nor ruthlessly. Very early in the history which 


prepared for the founding of the Christian Faith, one 


of the heroes dared to exclaim over a supposed course of 
divine action, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do 


right?’’ It has been a keynote of the Christian Faith that 


God will do right and that righteousness will ultimately 
win the day. 

(1) It is doubtful if the physical universe is ethical 
or has ethical purposes in itself. Eminent scholars in all 
nations argue that spiritual ethics has nothing to do with 
the physical order of the world. That may be so, but 
it is certain that ethical beings are in the universe, for 
men are here. “They can turn the universe to ethical uses, 
directing its forces so that they accomplish ethical ends. 
If they can do so, then the personal God in whom Chris- 
tians believe can do as much. Moreover, he can take’ the 
free actions of other ethical beings and direct them to 
good ends. If the physical world in itself has no pur- 
pose of moral good, God has a purpose of good in which 
he can include the physical world as well as the actions 
of human beings. This assurance removes from the 
Christian mind one of the chief causes of fear. Out of the 
serious and vexed complications of life an order can be 
brought—indeed, is being brought. 

(2) This method of escape from fear is equally an 
inspiration ‘to action. It permits no hiding from the 
grim facts of life nor any evading of responsibility for 
the evils of the world. God works through agencies, 
winning his way in the lives of men, if he may, but win- 
ning his way over the lives of men, if he must. This is not 
an arbitrary act of will and power; it is the expression 
of love and reason. One of the stories of the early part 
of the Bible is of a dire national emergency in which a 


young woman had the opportunity to help the situation 
by accepting a serious risk on her own part. An older 


—S — 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN ae 


elative, urging her to go forward, used the significant 
vords: “If thou altogether hold thy peace at this time, 
hen shall deliverance rise from another place, but thou 
nd thy father’s house shall be destroyed.’ There was 
© question about ultimate deliverance and the execution 
f the divine purpose. If it could not be done by one 
nstrument it would be done by some other. One of the 
arly apostles of Christ once passed through very adverse 
xperiences in which his heart was much tried, but he 
eclared that he could see in the midst of these experi- 
nces the progress of the purpose of God. No man who 
aitly sees that can be overwhelmed with fear. He may 
ecognize clearly that there will be adverse days, but he 
vill endure them in assurance of the progress of the 
hing he loves most. 

(3) The Christian proposal allays fear and brings 
ourage regarding one’s own life. An early incident re- 
ords the saying of a group of several young men who 
vere about to be killed by religious enemies. “They said 
hat their God would be able to deliver them from the 
ery furnace into which they were to be thrown and they 
relieved he would deliver them, but even if he did not, 
hey would not do what they felt was wrong. The cost 
f£ such failure would be much more than the experience 
f death. That is not stoicism; it is faith, trust in a 
ood God who is in control of the affairs of the world 
nd the lives of men. The Christian Faith does not 
dmit that men find their real value in advancing some 
novement that continues after their death. It holds 
ersonality on too high a plane for any such admission. 
\ British journal* contains a suggestive prose poem which 
xpresses what many think of life: 


*The Nation, May 17, 1924, “‘The Broken Tool,” by Edward 
carpenter. 


52 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


The broken tool lies: 

In the dust it lies forgotten—but the building goes on 
without delay. 

Who knows what dreams it had—this rusty old shaftless 
thing? 

(Or fancied it had: for what it supposed its own thoughts, 
were they not the thoughts of the artificer who 
wielded it?—-and his thoughts, were they not those 
of the architect?) 

Dreams of the beautiful finished structure, white with its 
myriad pinnacles, against the sky; 

Dreams of days and years of busy work, and the walls 
growing beneath it; 

Dreams of its own glory—absurd dreams of a temple built 
with one tool! 

Who knows?—and who cares? 

In the dust it lies broken now and unnoticed; 

But the building goes on without delay. 


This is not the hope of the Christian Faith. God has 
no discarded tools, thrown aside after their work is done 
while the building goes on. Each man contributes his 
part and passes on, but he passes on in an enlarged wealth 
of personality. 

(c) And so the Christian Faith helps to end that. 
deepest and last fear—the fear of death and the unknown 
future to which multitudes of men in all nations are al- 
ways subject. What does death mean to the individual 
life? What lies out beyond in that realm to which all 
men must go whether they will it or not? For the Chris- 
tian that too is under the guidance of the good and lov- 
ing Father whom Christ has taught him to trust. Few 
details are given, but the assurance remains that the fel- 
lowship with God and each other which has meant so 
much here will be even closer and clearer there. An early 
Christian writer expressed it well in saying that Christ 
makes life and immortality radiant in the gospel. Almost 
_ all men expect a future life. Christ makes it desirable. 
An American Christian professor, traveling in India, met 
a young priest of another faith and heard him speak of 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN a3 


the future which his faith held out to him, gloomy and 
forbidding. He felt himself bound on the Wheel of Life 
from which he could hope to escape only by many ex- 
periences yet to come, after which he would pass into 
oblivion, which was his desire. The Christian man de- 
scribed the Christian idea of the future, to which the 
young priest replied, “‘O yes, if one could expect such a 
life as that, it would be worth going to, but how do we 
know any such life exists?’’ His friend was able to say 
that at least we can know the Christian idea of the future | 
as reliably as any other idea and more reliably so because | 
Christ has proved so trustworthy a guide in other and / 
provable matters. 

Few Christian adherents would claim that their faith 
has yet been realized in their own lives so fully that they 
have been entirely released from fear, but they know the 
power of their Faith and that when they come fully into 
the realization of it they will know the perfect love that 
casteth out all fear. The reasons for fear can be driven 
away from life. It is part of the experience out of which 
grows the conviction that this Faith is true. 

3. A third element in the normal Christian experi- 
ence is a sense of peace with a holy God. In theory this 
might be simple enough. In practice it must take account 
of a universal sense of sin which grows deeper as the as- 
surance of a holy God gains in power. All religions-deal 
with this direful moral disorder, though they have differ- 
ent names for it, different explanations of its origin, dif- 
ferent methods for dealing with it. Something is clearly 
wrong in the moral life. Efforts to explain that wrong 
by mere heredity or environment have never yet succeeded 
in a man’s most serious moments. Man may be descended 
from the ape and tiger and may carry with him traces of 
that ancestry, but he knows that those traces need not 


54 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


show themselves in his life and should not be allowed to 
do so. When they do show themselves, there is no ex- 
cuse in the fact that they were there to begin with. If 
they were there, it was for the purpose of control, not for 
purposes of expression. His higher powers were obligated 
to subdue them; if they are not subdued then he has failed 
at the highest point of his being. His release of those 
powers of evil, the sin itself, is his own and not that of 
his ancestry. An American essayist once said that every 
man is an omnibus in which all his ancestors are riding. 
But every man has all kinds of passengers in his omnibus, 
and it is his own omnibus after all, and he must decide 
what kind of ancestor will help him to hold the reins. 

Explanation of human sin as a result of environment 
is equally ineffective. Every reasonable man knows the 
immense power of environment, but he knows also that 
a true man can select from his environment the kind of 
forces which shall become dominant in his life. He al- 
ways sins when he becomes a slave to his environment or 
to any one group of forces within it. There are ideals 
written in his nature, established in the very fact of his 
being human and not something else, toward which he 
ought to strive. He knows this duty of striving toward 
worthy ideals if he stops to assert his humanity at all. 
If he chooses to live like a brute, caring naught about his 
wide divergence from his true human ideal and duty, then 
that is itself sinful, for it means leaving out of account 
the very elements that make him human. In short, any 
treatment of sin that relieves it of its serious meaning in 
human life is fatally defective. 

In a religion such as Christianity, sin becomes a more 
serious reality because there is introduced the idea of a per- 
sonal God against whom the sin is committed. And 
when a sinful man and a holy God are brought together 
in thought, there can be nothing but unrest unless definite 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 50 


provision is made for peace. “Iwo familiar possibilities 
occur at once. ‘The sinfulness of sin may be minimized, 
or the holiness of God may be discounted—in either case 
the condition is relieved. But it is relieved at the cost of 
clear thinking. The Christian Faith adopts no such de- 
vice. It sharpens the sense of sin and strengthens the as- 
surance of the holiness of God, and yet it gives to its 
adherents a sense of peace with God. In a later lecture 
we are to discuss the Christian way of accomplishing this 
result. Just now it is enough to note it as a universal 
element in Christian experience. All who have ever for- 
given or been forgiven know that sometimes in purely 
human relationships there is a close nearness because of for- 
giveness. It is so in Christian experience. An early Chris- 
tian writer once bemoaned his sin in terms of the Romar 
form of punishment, whereby a dead body was bound 
to the offender; he cried, ‘“Who shall deliver me from this 
dead body of my sinful self?’’ And immediately he 
added, “I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord!”’ 
This is not an experience which is earned by self-suppres- 
sion or by sacrificial practices; it is received in the very 
acceptance of Jesus Christ as the unique Person of th 
Christian Faith, and in appreciation of the work whic 
he became incarnate to do. ‘The Christian believer does 
not arrive at this peace; he is privileged to start with it. 
Multitudes of believers have found it in their own lives. 
They have seen in God a love which nowhere conflicts 
with holiness but in which holiness expresses itself. “[rust- 
ing that love, with its inspiration to holiness in them- 
selves, they are at peace. 

4. A fourth element in Christian experience out of 
which Christian conviction grows is the enlargement of 
life which comes from intelligent acceptance of the Chris- 
tian Faith. Every religion has instances of humble men 
made great by obedience to its demands. If the Founder 


‘ke 


56 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


of the Christian Faith was from the home of a carpenter, 
so was the Founder of the Moslem Faith from the home 
of a camel driver. One of the first effects of religion 
is to widen the horizon of its advocates. “This widen- 
ing occurs in two ways—extensively and intensively. 
(a) Every man lives at the center of a series of circles 
with lengthening diameter. The smallest circle covers the 
field of his own obviously personal interests—his own 
ambitions, his advantage, an innermost group for which 
he counts himself responsible. Some men never go out- 
side this circle and deny responsibility for anything out- 
side. They gauge each demand by its bearing on the inner 
circle. ‘‘What will I get out of it? If nothing, then why 
should I do it or endure it?’’ A wider circle includes one’s 
community, perhaps one’s nation, and its chief virtue is 
patriotism of a narrow sort. Many men never go out- 
side this circle of responsibility; they measure every demand 
by it. When they have done their duty to this circle, 
their duty is done. One of them voiced the sentiment 
which multitudes in all lands share: “‘My country—may 
it always be right, but my country right or wrong!’’ Out- 
side of this circle lies no obligation. A still wider circle 
includes humanity, the universal human interest, wherein 
the man lives who finds nothing foreign to himself which 
concerns humanity, wherein are men who become world 
citizens. There are many to whom this is the ultimate 
limit of interest or concern. But all consciously religious 
men realize that there is something more, a circle wider 
than even this great one—the circle in which one comes 
into contact with the spiritual forces of the universe and 
becomes a factor in the program and purpose of God. 
These widening circles are never independent of each 
other and each gains in importance and opportunity by 
loyalty to the wider ones. The Christian religion widens 
life until it reaches this outermost circle by magnifying 





IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 57 


the personality of God and the participation of finite per- 
sonalities in His purposes. ‘The lesser circles are conceived 
as fields or stages in which the spiritual life may be ex- 
pressed, all their interests being best served when they are 
counted part of a total interest in which God himself is 
concerned. 

(b) The intensive widening of life involves the inclu- 
sion of increasing numbers of interests in one’s sense of 
obligation. Being a religious man may be expressed in 
doing a certain series of specified duties, or it may be ex- 
pressed in a spirit of life which determines all one’s life. 
The history of religion has some bad chapters in which 
men failed to apply their religious impulses to the whole 
of life, expressing them in only certain lines. ‘This has 
always been a temptation to Christian believers and they 
have often failed here. For example, the Christian Faith 
is essentially a religion of personality—a personal God on 
the one side and human personality on the other. It uses 
institutions and organizations but it magnifies personality. 
But here its adherents have failed it dismally. Slavery 
was the disgrace of Christendom until a few decades ago, 
and slavery is a social condition which has no defense 
before any intelligent Christian bar. It involves the dis- 
regard of personalities, subordinating some to the whims 
and will of others. The same complaint may be made 
regarding the evil elements of the modern industrial sys- 
tem, with their subjection of personality to machines or 
systems. Yet faith in the supreme right of personality 
is the clue to most of the beneficent movements for social 
betterment, housing, education, industrial reform, which 
are now engaging wide attention in Christendom. ‘This 
unfolding of the implications of the Christian Faith has 
startled some of its adherents, but there is no mistaking 
its validity. The social evils of Christendom are serious 
and disturbing, but they are never connected with the 


58 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


essence of Christianity; they contradict it. Life is the 
great object of the Christian religion. Christ said he 
came that men might have life and have it abundantly. 
Narrowed, restricted personalities are always a challenge 
to a sound Christian faith. 

But Christian experience brings its adherents into con- 
tact with the widest environment by bringing them into 
fellowship with God and by creating around the entire 
world a brotherhood of which they become a part. A 
Christian philosopher has outlined the different methods 
of maintaining a rich personality in this way: | 


The Epicurean says: Take into your life as many 
simple, natural pleasures as possible. “The Stoic says: 
Keep out of your mind all causes of anxiety and 
grief. The Platonist says: Lift up your soul above 
the dust and drudgery of daily life, into the pure 
air of the perfect and the good. ‘The Aristotelian 
says: Organize your life by a clear conception of 
the end for which you are living, seek diligently all 
means that further this end, and rigidly exclude all 
that would hinder it or distract you from it. The 
Christian says: Enlarge your spirit to include the 
interest and aims of all persons whom your life in 
any way affects. 


This means that for the Christian, enlargement of life 
comes from more thought of other people, and not from 
more thought of himself. This becomes a principle of 
life, which can be tested at many points. As it is tested, 
it proves to be effective and deepens the conviction that 
the world is built for service and not for gain. The 
methods listed under the names of other schools of thought 
have much merit, but they are often utterly impossible 
of application. One cannot keep out of his mind all 


4 


causes of anxiety and grief without deserting his ea 


IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 59 


in the hour of their deepest need. It is impossible to ex- 
clude from one’s life all the things that distract from 
pursuit of his one end in life. But one can constantly 
include the interests and aims of others in one’s life if 
only one wills to do so. Indeed, the very things that 
so often and so terribly distract the spirit are exactly the 
interests and aims of other people. We naturally rebel 
against them, we constantly resent them, unless we take 
them into our own interest by act of will. 

This is a great national principle which Christian na- 
tions are slowly learning. “The way of national enlarge- 
ment is not by exclusion of the interests of others but 
by including them as part of each nation’s concern. Patri- 
otism needs a new and more Christian turn. It has been 
tried for self-defense, for self-development, for self-asser- 
tion, and has its merits and its perils. It has not yet been 
tried whole-heartedly by any nation for service. If a 
body of patriots should think of their beloved nation as 
requiring their loyalty because only so can it become the 
factor in world helpfulness of which it is capable, there 
would be a new day for patriotism. A society of business 
‘men has been organized in many Christian lands, whose 
‘motto is, ‘““He prospers best who serves most.’ If the 
possible selfishness of the motto is avoided, it is deeply 
Christian. A true adherent of Christianity must learn 
to serve most whether he himself prospers or not, but it 
is one large evidence of the moral soundness of the Chris- 
tian system that it fits into human needs so closely. Call- 
ing men to service, it gives them unsought prosperity. 
‘Nations have not yet learned the Christian principle as 
they must do before the better order of humanity is 
brought in, but multitudes of men have learned it and 
have found the enlarged life which is the outcome of true 
Christian experience. 

5. Our discussion has already involved the fifth ele- 


60 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


ment in Christian experience—love for others. All stu- 
dents of the Christian Faith realize that its fundamental — 
principle is love and that in its theory there are no limits 
to the application of the principle. The failure of its ad- 
herents here has often been ghastly and regrettable. 
Within limits they have learned much of the practice of 
true love, but the very setting of limits tends to spoil 
the beauty of it. (a) Its most severe demand is that of 
love for one’s enemies. Anybody can love his friends or 
those who are part of his natural group, but there are not 
a few who declare that love of one’s enemies is an impos- 
sible ideal. An eminent Chinese statesman has praised the 
Christian ethic highly, but declares that at this point it 
is impossible. Fortunately, there is clear enough proof 
of its possibility in the case of Jesus himself. He bore 
his enemies no malice nor hatred. He would not have 
had harm come to them. It will not do to say, therefore, 
that love of one’s enemies is an impossible theory. But 
the case will grow clearer if we attempt a plain definition: 
Christian love is open-hearted regard for all men, willing | 
only good to them and ready on any proper occasion to 
put that will into effective action. When it is so stated, 
it is seen to be far deeper than any mere emotion. It roots : 
in the will. And to a man who understands the Chris’ 
tian Faith, anything less than this is unthinkable. No 
man who follows Jesus Christ could desire for any of his 
fellow creatures aught but good. Nor could any man be 
a follower of Christ and not be ready to seize any prope 
occasion to do good to men. What else should he do? 
But there are other groups of men beside one’s enemies 
(b) There is the group which one joins in becoming 
Christian—the Christian brotherhood of every name an 
order. Here also the failure of Christians is confessed wit 
shame. The failure is not universal, of course, for ther 
are many Christians who have accomplished the difficult 









IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 61 


feat of loving those who differ from them on points of 
faith. Religious controversies have always been painful, 
but religious differences have often been profitable. Any 
faith that makes use of intellectual conceptions is sure to 
find differences among its adherents because of their differ- 
ing points of view. This is not where the Christian Faith 
is tested. The test comes in maintaining a full spirit of 
love in the midst of differences. Happily, such love does 
exist widely among Christians. They constitute the wid- 
est brotherhood of the world, among more races than any 
other, in more classes of society than any other, in a larger 
geographical area than any other. When a man becomes 
truly a Christian, he experiences a sense of brotherhood 
with fellow believers which increases with his knowledge 
of the meaning of his faith. When that love receives the 
development it deserves, there will be far less division 
among Christians than now exists. Toward that good 
day many Christians from the West hope that believers in 
the East may lead the way. 

/ (c) A third group toward whom Christian experience 
demands love is the world at large, men of other faiths 
and nations, men everywhere and of all sorts. Naturally 
this puts a strain on Christian believers at many points and 
they have often failed in it, but what they have come to 
know deepens their conviction that their Faith is true. 
It is what the world needs. At two points it requires 
fuller expression and is steadily receiving it in Christian 
lands, though with much failure. Christian love makes 
the idea of war. ultimately unthinkable and also sets a 
complete ban on racial antagonism. These are the two 
outstanding evils of the day in Christendom. It must be 
said, however, that it is in very recent times that either 
of them has been considered open to debate. Both have 
been taken for granted for centuries, Christian believers 


62 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


claim that it is their own Faith which, at least for them. 
has made them problems at all. 

They have followed the usual course in Christian ex- 
perience. Three stages ordinarily mark social advance in 
Christian lands. A certain condition gradually grows or — 
is inherited from the past and is taken for granted without 
serious discussion. ‘Then, if it comes to be measured by — 
the standards of Christ, specially by his spirit, it ceases 
to be a matter of course and becomes a problem. It is not 
easy at first to see the solution of it. Always some think © 
it cannot be solved—that the race must get on with evils 
and find some way of living in spite of them. But this_ 
idea contradicts Christian belief. Nothing evil is neces-— 
sary in a sound moral order. Presently the evil becomes | 
not merely a problem but an impossibility. It is no longer | 
possible for a Christian to endure it. ‘That was true of © 
slavery, of personal dueling, of gambling. Christian ad-~ 
herents may, unhappily, do all these things, but no Chris- 
tian can defend them as parts of his religious life. He 
must do them, if at all, in spite of being a Christian. - 
Rapidly the two great social evils of war and racial an- 
tipathy are approaching the final stage with Christian 
believers. The solution of some of the problems which — 

. they contain is not yet known. There isa heavy remainder | 
of tradition and historical theory in both subjects. It is 
impossible now to see how the way out is to be found. 
But increasingly it becomes apparent that between true 
Christian love and either war or racial hatreds or a per- 

manent status of inferiority there is a hopeless antithesis. 
Aiqye Since that is true, the Christian Faith is pledged to the 

' destruction of both. It may be, it doubtless will be, a long 
campaign, but Christian believers cannot admit that any 
evil is necessary in the relations between men. For the 
first time in history there seems to be a serious facing of 
these two terrible evils. The values which they represent 





IN ITS PERSONAL ORIGIN 63 


are to be conserved, but they themselves must disappear 
before the realization of the real logic of Christian love. 


VI 


Such are some of the elements of Christian experience 
out of which the Christian conviction springs. As was 
said at the first, the conviction helps to develop the expe- 
riences, but no man will stand bravely for the conviction 
who has not had the experiences. A recent Christian 
writer names four tests of religious beliefs which seem fair 
and binding: 1. Are the beliefs logically satisfying, more 
so than the opposite beliefs? By this test the Christian 
experiences have the mark of truth. The negation of any 
one of the five named would make for poorer living and 
leave the world less logical and satisfying for the moral 
life. 2. Are the beliefs morally fruitful? Here again it 
is only fair to urge that the character that would be main- 
tained by full acceptance of and loyalty to the Christian 
experiences would be the character the world needs. 
3. Are they proof against “‘the slings and arrows of out- 
rageous fortune?’ ‘That is, will they bear the test of ° 
adversity both in themselves and in the lives of their ad- 
herents? It is a severe test—the test of stormy weather for | 
the boat, of the floods and rains for the foundation of the 
house. But many religious ideas can meet it, the Chris- 
tian Faith surely among them. For has not that Faith its 
fair share of the martyrs of emergency and the martyrs of 
the long and hard grind? 4. Are the beliefs a source of ~ 
power and health to mind and body? Do they make of 
each man the best he might become and do they offer to 
society its fullest development? Much of this must be 
discussed later, but now it is humbly argued that the 
Christian Faith will meet this test also, 

All this means that the Christian conviction is not 
merely an historical conclusion. It is also and even more a 


64 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


daily experience by which and for which men are living. 
Christians offer their faith to the world not because of its 
history, but because they find it a present joy and inspira- 
tion, a present rebuke to everything unworthy in them- 
selves, the source of experiences which lift their lives. They 
would not be true to the love which their Faith forms in 
them if they did not offer it to other men for its wide and 
fine outlook on life. Much of the worst of Christendom 
is given to other lands. Shall not the best be given 
as well? 


a 


ta 


CHAPTER IV 
THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION REGARDING GOD 


In the earlier lectures we have discussed the two sources 
of the Christian Faith—its initial origin in history in a 
unique Person and a unique Book, and its perennial origin 
in the vital personal experience of Christian believers. We 
come now to the discussion of some of the central and dom- 
inating ideas of Christianity, on the basis of which it 
offers itself to the world. 

A religion is always to be tested by its answers to a 
fourfold question: What does it teach about God, about 
man, about the relation between God and man, about the 
relation between man and man? All faiths offer teaching 
on each of the four points. It is this that lifts them into 
the realm of religion and widens them beyond the field of 
ethics. On this account all the major religions have some 
things in common; they cover the same general field. For 
example, all affirm the existence of something that may be 
described as God; all assert the moral and rational nature 
of man; all prescribe some way of bringing salvation from 
the effect of sin in the individual and some way of bring- 
ing about right relations among men. Every religion leads 
to some sort of ethical theory, for in one sense religion is 
merely a way of living—living with reference to God and 
living with reference to other men. Christianity, like any 
other religion, is a distinctive way of living. But this 
implies that it must have distinctive ideas about God and 

65 


66 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


man and their relation, since human relationships are 
always affected or determined by these ideas. 

As its name implies, Christianity is essentially a Faith 
from and regarding Christ. ‘This is illustrated in the 
Christian idea of God, which is derived from and mea- 
sured by Christ, partly in what he taught and partly in 
what he was himself. 


I 


The idea of God is the central fact of religion, influ- 
encing or determining all other ideas. It measures the 
dignity of any religion. ‘There are several instances in 
history when effort was made to establish or maintain 
religion on the basis of atheism or agnosticism, but always 
with one of two results; either the decay of the religion 
ot the introduction of the theistic idea under some other 
form. The theoretical possibility of an atheistic religion 
might be discussed; its practical or historical feasibility 1s 
out of the question. — 

There are many ideas of God in the world. They 
range from crude forms of animism and superstition to 
the lofty conceptions which appear in the highly ethical 
faiths of the world. As the theistic idea advances, its prob-- 
lems increase. The most serious problems of theism 
emerge with the assertion of the highest conception of 
deity, never with the lowest conceptions. But this is true 
of all intellectual progress. The primitive savage with his 
simple ideas of the world about him, ignorant of its vast- 
ness, unconscious of its complexity, knows no such intri- 
cate problems as beset the intelligent physicist who seeks 
to understand the universe. A keen observer of intel- : 
lectual history has remarked that the answer to any serious 
question about the universe brings at least two more ques- — 
tions into sight, adding, ‘“We are becoming more and more | 
learnedly ignorant.” This is equally true in the field of — 


REGARDING GOD 67 


theism; the higher the conception rises the more wide- 
reaching are the problems involved. 

Over against all ideas of God may be set a fundamental 
question: whether the human mind can know God? Is 
not God of such a nature, if he exists at all, and is his 
being not necessarily so vast, that the human mind cannot 
receive dependable knowledge of him? And if the mind 
cannot know him accurately, ought it to claim any knowl- 
edge of him at all? The answer is not far to seek. If we 
must know a reality completely in order to claim to know 
it at all, then we cannot know God. But in that case we 
cannot know anything, and the real need is for a new defi- 
nition of knowledge. There is no possible object regarding 
which we can claim complete knowledge either in its 
nature or in its relationships. An English poet laureate 
once said that he could hold a flower in his hand, root | 
and all, but if he could know all that it really involves 
he would then know that God and man are. Every fact 
is rooted in the universal reality. There is no object so 
small that we can know all about it, but there is no object 
so great that we cannot know something that is true 
about it. The human mind has the capacity for recog- 
nizing reality, for knowing truth, and though it cannot 
exhaust the meaning of any single instance of reality, it 
can apprehend truth as it is manifested in any reality. 
This is entirely compatible with a clear realization of the 
fragmentary nature of the knowledge, more markedly 
fragmentary in some cases than in others. An early Chris- 
tian writer said regarding life in general, “‘Now I know in 
part—in part, but still—I know.’’ Knowing God only in 
part is real knowledge, A Scotch religious philosopher has 
expressed the Christian idea in these words: 


Hopeless and universal indeed would be our ignor- 
ance if that can never claim to be knowledge which 


68 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


is not perfect knowledge. In that case, we are not 
only incapable of knowing God but also our fellow- 
men and ourselves. For who will contend that he 
has fathomed the depths of a single human heart or 
that the philosophy of the human mind contains for 
him no insoluble problem? If then we feel that 
we do know something of our brother, though we 
cannot know all, we conclude that our knowledge of 
God may be real though it cannot be exhaustive. 


The greatest capacity of the human mind is not its 
power of adapting physical means to end—animals also 
have that power; nor its power to respond to physical 
stimuli—animals also make such response; but its power 
to respond to ideas and ideal situations, to foresee and be 
commanded by a condition which does not exist but may 
be made to exist by alliance with a power above itself, 
an unseen, spiritual power. To say that man cannot 
apprehend God would be to say that man’s supreme 
power is deceptive. He has always been at his best when 
he has most fully realized himself as a spiritual force in a 
world at whose head is spiritual power. And it does not 
matter whether he reaches the idea of God from within 
or receives it from without, for in a rational world the 
movement may start at either end. If the necessities of 
his own soul require a God, then there is proof of the 
rationality of the world when his need is supplied by find- 
ing a God; and if God is making himself known to man 
and arousing his sense of need, then there is again proof 
of the rational order in which man finds himself. Man 
and his environment together reach the idea of an appre- 
hendable God, though the God apprehended may not be 
comprehended in fullness. The Christian conviction is 
of a God who may be known, who has manifested him- 


REGARDING GOD 69 


self to men that they may know him, and with whom a 
man may have fellowship. 

Such a Being cannot be defined, but some description 
of the conception is possible. “The Christian Faith has no 
recognized and final statement which is imagined to ex- 
haust the meaning of experience with God, but all thought- 
ful adherents of the Faith have convictions which may be 
united into a phrasing with which most of them would 
agree. Amid all these descriptions, these elements are 
generally to be found: ‘The Christian Faith teaches that 
there is an infinite Being whom man ought to worship, 
who is rational, moral and benevolent—a Person; who 
holds such relation to men that he is best described as 
Father; who is beyond the world and yet within it; and 
who reveals himself in nature, in the experiences of men, 
and notably in Jesus Christ. To most Christian adherents, 
any such description seems much too cold and distant. 
They would be better satisfied to say that God is the loving 
heavenly Father of whom Jesus taught and who makes 
himself known in Christ..’ To the Christian, God is like 
Christ. As a modern Christian scholar has phrased it, 
“God is an almighty and omnipresent Christ.’’ “That is, 
God is throughout all the universe what Christ showed 
himself to be during his earthly life. ~The Christian 
knows who God is by studying Christ. And the ordinary 
Christian, even though most scholarly, is not baffled by 
the thought of the infinite God being manifested in a 
human being, for if God is infinite in power he must 
surely have power to make himself known where and how 
he will. One of the early writers spoke of the divine 
Christ as “emptying himself’’ that he might become man. 
He laid aside those divine grandeurs which would over- 
bear the human spirit and accepted humbly the limitations 
of his own creation. The whole Christian conception of 
God rests on the assurance that God is able to do this and 


70 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


is loving enough to do it for the sake of making himself 
known to men and of saving them. With the Absolute 
of philosophy Christianity has little concern, Its concern 
is with a God who has made himself known in relation 
to men, who has yielded his absoluteness so far as was 
needed in order to become real to men. Some religions 
have finite gods, limited by conditions which they cannot 
control, finite by origin and in activity. Christianity 
knows no such God. The God whom it worships and 
loves is infinite in himself and loving enough to accept 
for himself for a time the limitations of finiteness, that 
he may come near to men whom he loves and whose fel- 
lowship he desires. All his limitations are self-imposed 
and voluntarily assumed. 


II 


Large volumes have been written in the effort to express : 
the Christian idea of God in its fullness, but here we 
venture to state the heart of that idea in a single sentence. 
The Christian conviction is that God is a holy, loving 
Father, who creates, sustains and directs all things. Such 
a sentence seems to reach the core of the fuller descriptive 
statement just presented. "Two important remarks are. 
suggested by the latter part of the sentence. 

1. How God creates, sustains and directs all things is 
a question of science and not of religion. Scientific men 
are discussing the method whereby the present natural 
order came to be. The outcome of that discussion is not 
of essential importance to religion. Whether the later 
idea of a prolonged process of unfolding forces or the earlier 
idea of creative fiat should prove the true one may be 
safely left to workers in this department of knowledge. 
The Christian Faith is concerned with the matter at only 
two points: (a) Whatever may be discovered to be the 
process of creation or control, it is to be accepted as a 


REGARDING GOD 7\ 


process and not as a sufficient cause. God is not to be 
eliminated on merely scientific grounds, when physical 
science as such cannot cover the field in which religion 
finds God. (b) When the universe is explained by a 
scientific theory, it must be the universe as it actually is 
and not a theoretical universe made to fit the theory. If 
the application of any theory requires, for example, that 
the moral or volitional nature of man be explained away 
or canceled in order to carry out the logic of the theory, 
then religion enters a protest. [his has happened when 
human freedom and moral responsibility are denied because 
a mechanistic theory collides with them. In the same 
way the spiritual nature of man has sometimes been reduced 
to meaningless words in the interest of a materialistic 
scheme of the universe. When either of these errors is 
committed, the protest of the Christian Faith is not against 
evolution but against atheism and materialism. here 
is no conflict whatever between evolution and HL aera 
but there is an inevitable conflict between atheism and 
Christianity and between materialism and Christianity. In 
a few moments we shall return to this point, but here it 
is mentioned for the sake of clearness. 

2. The Christian Faith understands that God sustains 
and controls all things according to the nature of the 
things controlled. He does not control inanimate things 
as he controls animate ones, nor these as he controls ra- 
tional, personal beings. Men are not animals nor things 
and they are not controlled as these are. Christianity sees 
all these realities as the creation and work of God and their 
natures as his gifts. It declares that God continues loyal 
to his own creative work, dealing with all things in ways 
that are suitable to them. Much of the problem that seems 
involved in the question of human freedom and divine 
control arises from overlooking this fact. The control 
of God over rational beings is suited to the nature of those 


‘2 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


beings; it is not a control of force nor of arbitrary power. 
For this reason men have large liberty to refuse divine 
control, and within wide limits are able to go contrary to 
God’s wish for them. Since they continue to be his crea- 
‘tures and to be part of his universe, his ultimate control | 
+s never released. At the long last he maintains his own” 
universe and all its elements. But it is not baffling to the 
Christian Faith to observe the slow process whereby the 
moral will of God is executed among moral beings. Pers) 
sonality cannot be forced as impersonal things can be. 
forced. It must be won, appealed to by motives suitable 
to its nature. This is the method of the control of God. | 
He is sovereign, but he exercises his sovereignty in harmony | 
with his own work in creation. He governs as a Father 
governs, with all patience and persistency, in constalll 
regard for the development of his children, never for- 
saking his right to control and never forcing it by mere 
acts of power. However it is done, God is always in 
control. 

With these two remarks regarding the latter part of the 
statement above, we pass to the consideration of its earlier 
half. i 

Ill ’ 

Central in the Christian conception of God is his per- 
‘sonality. The fact of divine personality is asserted by 
several other faiths, but the Christian idea has certain dis- 
tinctive traits which we must discuss as we go on. An 
eminent Cambridge scholar reminds us that we must ask 

“what a religion makes of God, whether it speaks of him 
in the singular or the plural, the neuter or the abated 
And here we shall find that progress more and more des 
pends on the personality of God—that this militates 
against polytheism and safeguards the personality of ma | 
and all the morality bound up with the society of men 









REGARDING GOD 73 


God’s personality and man’s personality are going to stand 
or fall together.’’ Notice that this declaration of the per- 
sonality of God involves refusal to identify God with the 
universe or to count him merely the power that operates 
the forces of the world. No personal being, like man, could 
worship any being who is less than personal. We may 
be in great fear of force or may stand in amazement at 
the vastness of the universe, but we can never love or wor- 
ship mere power or vastness or an accumulation of forces. 
We cannot commune with anything that is not personal- 
ized before us. It is noticeable that the great nature poets 
in all faiths always address nature or any of its elements 
in personal terms. Only so can the human reason con- 
sent to commune with them. If there is a God to be 
worshipped, he must be a personal being. 

Two other ideas are often set against this. (a) One 
idea makes God merely our highest concept, including the 
universe and ourselves, sometimes a social concept, some- 
times a mechanical one, finding all personal elements in 
him merely the reflection of personality in ourselves. But 
‘we must observe that this reduces worship to a persistent 
illusion, destroying its moral element. If there is not a 
teal personal element in the object of worship and yet we 
must consider it personal before we can worship it, then 
we are forced to unreality in order to be religious. But 
this would mean that religion is an immoral force, leading 
the moral nature into unreality. Historically this is simply 
not the case. There have been degraded forms of religion, 
intimately connected with forms of immorality, but these 
have been no essential part of religion itself. The highest 
religions are intimately connected with the highest forms 
of ethics. Deceit and unreality are farthest from their in- 
fluence. Poets can personalize nature and its powers be- 
ause those powers are rationally established and controlled. 
If there were no reason in the universe none could be found 








74 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


there. A rational being can stand before a disordered heap © 
of rubbish and classify its contents according to any scheme — 
‘na his own mind, but always subject to its inner reality. 
He cannot stand before a heap of metal and rationalize it 
into a musical symphony. He cannot stand before a group 
of disorganized musival notes and turn them into a steam- 
boat or a sailing vessel. If there were not rational ele- 
ments in the natural order, no poet could find them there 
nor fall into rhapsodies over them. The Christian con- 
ception of a personal God is required by the fact of wor- 
ship among rational beings. Personality can never fall 
before impersonality without degrading itself. But re- 
ligion, so far from degrading humanity, elevates it to its 
noblest levels. Man’s hours of sincere worship are his 
highest hours. 

This is the answer also to those who count religion 
merely a passing stage in human development. They 
count it worthy of a pre-scientific era, but foredoomed to 
disappearance with the advance of that era. In that case, 
the highest expression of humanity must cease with the 
coming of science. He who has worshiped personality, 
himself being personal, must in that case cease to worship 
at all, and so cease to express himself at his highest; of 
else he must worship powers and forces lower than him- 
self, for even the entire universe, if it is impersonal, lacks 
the highest traits of human personality. Man can know 
and feel and love and do right and wrong. The object 
of his worship must be able to do at least as much as 
this. But the universe, no matter how great, the me- 
chanical order of nature, no matter how fine, the forces 
of vitality, no matter how varied, cannot know, nor feel,. 
nor love. Only personality can do this. If God is not 
personal, he cannot be worshiped, and if man cannot wor- 
ship, he cannot reach his own heights. 

(b) The other opposing idea is that calling God per- 


it ah en a he 


REGARDING GOD 75 


sonal limits him and so is unworthy of him. It is sug- 
gested that we should call God superpersonal or allow him 
to be undesignated, lest we limit him. Now, as a matter 
of fact, the highest idea of reality that we possess is that 
of personality. A Christian philosopher has reminded us 
that it is in his personality that man is least limited. Man 
is limited physically and his body limits his mental action, 
but in the distinctive traits of personality his limitations 
are least observable. [here are no visible limits to the 
power of knowledge or of feeling or of loving or of appre- 
hension of right or wrong. He suggests that it is God 
who is unlimited personality and is therefore the one true 
Person of the universe, man having merely a shadow or. 
hint of the true personality which he has received from 
God. It may be further urged that no man has any idea 
of the meaning of superpersonal. We know in part at 
least what “‘personal’’ means, and we know what “‘super’’ 
means, but when the words are put together we do not 
know any meaning for them. It is as if we should say 
super-round. We know what “round’’ means and we 
know what “‘super’’ means, but super-round conveys no 
intelligible meaning. That is because “‘personal’’ and 
“round,”’ each in its own sphere, represents the ultimate 
idea of that sphere for our minds. If we mean that 
God’s personality is superior to our own, then the idea 
expresses only a commonplace of Christian thinking. Of 
course that is so. God is perfectly personal, while we 
are imperfectly so. But if God is superpersonal, then we 
have no intelligible idea about Him. ‘The phrase may be 
an expression of humility on our part, but it is not a 
sound confession of faith in a God whom we may worship 
and love. A Western philosopher has remarked that the 
choice is not between a personal God and something lower, 
but between a personal God and something higher. But 
this involves a choice between an intelligible theism and 


76 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


an unintelligible one, between a God who means some- 
thing to man and a God who means nothing to him. The 
Christian Faith takes its place definitely with the idea of 
a personal God. 

In so far as personality limits God, we must notice again 
that for the Christian Faith an absolute God, with no 
traits and no relation to other beings, can have no interest. 
If it requires limitation on the part of God for us to know 
and love and worship him, then we are sure that the 
limitation exists because he does allow us to know him 
and love him and worship him. We do not believe it 
involves any limitation except that of his own loving 
nature, making itself known to his creatures. 


IV 


One necessary mark of personality is rationality. It 
is a comforting element in the Christian belief in God that 
he is a being of reason and that both the world and his 
relation to mankind indicate his rationality. (a) During 
the past seventy-five years great changes have occurred in 
Christendom in the outlook of thoughtful men on the 
physical world. Near the opening of the modern sci- 
entific era there appeared the broad doctrine of evolution 
as the method whereby the world came to its present 
form. It is not now, and never has been, a doctrine of 
origins but only of order. It does not explain the first 
appearance of the world, and it has not yet an accepted 
theory of the organization of its elements into their present 
form. In the narrow sphere of animal life, there is no 
agreement on the origin of species of animals nor on the 
time of the appearance of man in the total order. ‘These 
incomplete developments of the theory do not, however, 
‘ntroduce into most scientific minds any serious doubt of 
the essential truth of the theory itself. The evidences of 
development and of the origin of each species in some rela- 


REGARDING GOD ry | 


tion to others have become overwhelming to most sci- 
entists. “The first appearance of the doctrine led to extremes 
of enthusiasm and it was acclaimed in some quarters as 
the death of religion. But its soundest adherents took 
no such position. A group of eminent scientists in America 
last year joined a similar group of eminent religious 
leaders in a joint statement which includes this paragraph: 


It is a sublime conception of God which is fur- 
nished by science, and one wholly consonant with 
the highest ideals of religion, when it presents him as 
revealing himself through countless ages in the de- 
velopment of the earth as an abode for man and in 
the agelong inbreathing of life into its constituent 

| matter, culminating in man with his spiritual nature 
| and all his God-like powers. 

The first signer of this declaration on the scientific side is 
the President of the National Academy of Science, who is 
also President of the American Association for the Ad- 
-vancement of Science, and also head of the Smithsonian 
Institution of Washington, the government scientific insti- 
tution. The declaration involves the agreement of the 
new scientific conception of the universe with the Chris- 
tian conception of a personal God. ‘There are many who 
feel that the evolutionary idea involves more, rather than 
Tess, evidence of the rationality of the universe. It is not 
“yet proved true, but if it should be so, then it will remind 
us of the age-long wisdom of God, guiding the universe 
toward worthy ends. Evolution or fiat creation or any 
other process is merely the way in which God made and 
maintains and orders the universe. We are not told how 
he did it or does it, but are left to seek that truth under 
his guidance. When we find his method, we must be care- 
ful not to lose him whose method it is. A Christian writer 
has said recently that when we find out how a thing is 








78 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


done we should not suppose that therefore nobody did it. 
(b) This is equally so regarding the modern mech- 
anistic view of the universe and of life. If it denies the 
reality of personal power and such degree of freedom in 
the universe as personality requires in order to be itself, 
it is not true to the facts of life. But in so far as it is 
merely an account of the universe as it may be observed — 
through microscope and telescope, it need not be disputed, © : 
The mechanism of the world is not an explanation of its 
own origin nor of its direction. When science discusses 
the world which it sees it is wholly commendable, but 
when it encloses that world within purely physical or 
mechanistic envelopes it robs the world of its finest values. 
It is exactly where human reason makes its great leap be- 
yond the seen and heard and felt that it is noblest. Noth- 
ing in a sound mechanism forbids recognition of a 
mechanic or a mover to whom all the mechanism and 
motion owe their force and continuance. ‘This personal 
force behind and within the mechanism or the develop- 
ment is, in Christian belief, the loving heavenly Father 
of Christ’s teaching. The very possibility of science is 
evidence of the rational element in nature. Science is a 
record of discovery, not a story of invention. It tells 
what order and system and meaning have been found in 
nature. As Huxley said, science is most like the true Chris-. 
tian Faith in its requirement that a scientist shall be like 
a little child in his humility, sitting humbly before nature 
to learn the facts, imposing nothing out of his own mind. 
But any scientist would be sure to-day that there is a 
discoverable order in nature. It is rationally organized 
and rationally ordered. Much of the order is only dimly 
known as yet and the great reality back of the order is 
even less known. Recently the University of Glasgow 
celebrated the centennial of the birth of the late Lord 
Kelvin, whose knowledge in natural science brought much 





ose: 


REGARDING GOD rf) 


honor to the University. During that celebration, on 
several occasions reference was made to his great humility. 
His words at his fiftieth anniversary as a professor of 
natural science were quoted: 


One word characterizes the most strenuous of the 
efforts for the advancement of science that I have 
made perseveringly during fifty-five years; that word 
is failure. I know no more of electric and magnetic 
force or of the relation between either, electricity and 
ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than | 
knew and tried to teach to my students of natural 
philosophy fifty years ago in my first session as 
Professor. 


Perhaps that is too strong a word for these days of 
electrons and radium force, but its spirit is that of great 
scientists the world around. [They know the universe 
is rational but they are only slowly working out its order. 

(c) It is a large element in the faith of the Christian 
that this rationality governs all of his own experiences 
which are often so baffling to himself. He cannot dis- 
cover the reasons for what happens to him, but he is so 
sure of the rationality of God that he knows there are 
reasons, and that if he could know all of them he would 
accept them as just and kindly. One of the writers pre- 
ceding the Christian Faith expressed it in familiar words: 
“Though He slay me, yet will I put my trust in Him.”’ 
The reasons of God may often be as far beyond our grasp 
as the reasons of parents are beyond the grasp of small 
children, yet as children learn to trust their parents, so 
men can learn to trust God, not in stoical acceptance of 
His almighty will nor in cynical acceptance of a fate 
which cannot be escaped, but in assurance of reason and 
order in the universe because of a personal, rational God. 

-(d) Moreover, this assurance of the rationality of the 


80 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


universe gives courage for the correction of evils which © 
have appeared in it by reason of the sin and ignorance of 
men. ‘There is no evil now in the world which is not the 
outcome of forces which can be discovered and corrected. 
The universe does not contradict itself. It does not destroy 
itself if it is rational. When, therefore, it appears that 
a certain thing is evil, there is an assurance that it can be 
destroyed and set right in the fact that the universe is 
rational and right at heart. 


V 


Another mark of personality is morality. This means 
rational righteousness. Sometimes it is set over against 
love, as though God must be thought of as sometimes 
loving and sometimes just. No such distinction is legiti- 
mate. All true love is righteous, and all true justice is 
loving. The Christian Faith lays heavy accent on the 
fact of the righteousness of God. ‘The suggestion that 
God may be “‘above morals,’’ having or being such a law 
unto himself that the morality of finite beings has no ap- 
plication to him, is doubtless intended to suggest the great- | 
ness of God, but it does so at cost of his character as a 
personal being. There can be nothing which it is right 
in principle for God to do which would not be right also 
for man to do. God’s wisdom and power so surpass those 
of finite beings that the temptation is strong to suppose 
that his morality surpasses that of man, but on any sound 
theory morality is a qualitative matter and cannot be 
surpassed. It may be better or more poorly expressed, but 
in itself it is of one essential quality. The final word is 
said when a being is called moral; in the field of character 
there is no meaning in being “‘above morality.” . 

For a good man it is not worth while to believe in a 
God who is not holy and pure and righteous. Indeed, 
such a man cannot long continue to believe in any such 


REGARDING GOD 81 


God. ‘That is one reason why some faiths lose their ad- 
herents. ‘They are better themselves than the gods they 
are called to believe. Over against this the Christian Faith 
sets an ideal of a God of spotless holiness whose righteous 
character is a constant challenge to all sinful lives. The 
early patriarch has already been quoted, with his daring 
demand that the Judge of all the earth must do right. 

This necessary element in the Christian conception 
brings with it one of its greatest difficulties. How can a 
perfect God govern such an imperfect world as this? The 
existence in the world of evil, moral evil, sin, is one of 
the problems of the ages. We are to discuss it more fully 
in a later lecture, but it must be briefly considered here. 
(a) The origin of evil has been much discussed. Some 
faiths have counted it as eternal as good, seeing in the 
world a constant duel between the two forces of good and 
evil. Some modern believers find it nothing but a con- 
tinuance of the struggle from the lower life upward, all 
men bringing up from the lower levels something of the 
ape and tiger which is still unsubdued. Some late believers 
count it all an illusion, purely a matter of the mind, im- 
possible of reality because of the goodness of God which 
could not permit its existence except in human thinking. 

None of these treatments of the existence of moral evil 
has proved satisfactory to Christian belief. Moral evil 
is a ruinous element in life which cannot be intended to 
be eternal. It is an extraneous factor which is not at 
home anywhere in the order of humanity. It is too force- 
ful in itself to be a mere illusion, and as we have noted, 
its actual evil is not explained by the possible remainder 
in humanity of traits of the brute. If those traits are 
meant to be subdued, why are they not subdued? ‘That 
is exactly the meaning of sin. Something is going on that 
should not go on. It does not much matter what it is, 


82 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


when it is ruining the nature of man as that nature ought © 


to be. 
(b) The Christian Faith finds the root of sin in the 


human will. It is the outcome of choosing wrongly in 


the presence of a demand of God. It is an outcome of — 


human liberty. Much of the discussion of its origin 1s 
beside the point. It is spoken of as though it were a 
thing. Men ask if God made it. Asa matter of fact, no 
one made it for it is not a thing to be made. It is a con- 


dition of a will. There is no moral evil apart from a | 


will that can choose. When the time came that human 
wills faced their duty in the moral world and refused to 
do it, sin became a reality. No new fact emerged, but a 
new condition of a will. The real problem lies in the 
existence of wills with any degree of freedom. In a uni- 


verse where free wills are permitted, there must be a possi- — 


bility of moral evil. Should there be any such universe? 
The reply must be personal to each of us. Freedom of 
will is so priceless a possession that a universe which con- 
tains it is better, even though sin may come into it, than a 
universe could be without it. For where evil is not: pos- 
sible, good is not possible either. It is not necessary that 
evil actually exist in order to the existence of good, but 
the possibilities of the two run side by side. In order to 
be morally good, any will must be free to choose the good, 
but if it is free to choose the good it must be free to choose 
the evil. The presence of moral evil in the world is not a 
denial of the morality or righteousness of God. It is 


rather an assertion of the freedom of man. Its continuance 
in the world is a testimony to the integrity of God, in that | 
he maintains man in the freedom which he gave to him 
originally, continuing to maintain him in it though he | 


misuses it. Moral evil bears witness to the moral nature 


¥ 
‘ 


of both man and God—its reliability in God and its abuse 


in man. An early apostle supports this teaching with his — 


a ad 


LO in 


a? 


REGARDING GOD 83 


record of the presence in himself of what seemed two men, 
one choosing good, the other choosing evil. It was a 
matter of his will, divided, distracted, uncentered. But 
he knew the outcome. Through Christ he would yet be 
brought to the triumphant choice of righteousness and the 
refusal of moral evil. 

(c) It is not proved that the world is imperfect apart 
from the evil of human wills. In so far as it is still 
developing toward some better end it will appear imper- 
fect, but it may be perfect for the stage in which it is. 
When men are building a cathedral it is imperfect from 
the point of view of the completed building, but the archi- 
tect and the builder and the laborers may be greatly pleased 
with it each night as they go to their rest because it is so 
exactly what they wish it to be at the present stage of its 
erection. This world, so far as its moral condition is 
concerned, may be well considered a stage for the develop- 
ment of human character. From that point of view it is 
a sound and right world. Moral characters in it are deeply 
defective, often terribly wrong, but that need be no dis- 
credit to the order apart from them. And there can be 
little doubt that the present world is more markedly on 
the side of moral character than we usually think. It is 
really not a good world to be bad in. ‘The forces of 
morality and the forces of the physical universe are closely 
allied. Men who violate moral laws find their punishment - 
at the hand of nature as well as of sound society. Intem- 
-perance is both a moral and a physical evil. Falsehood will 
destroy a man in the physical as well as in the moral order. 
The two orders are not the same, but they have close like- 
nesses. At any rate, until we know more of the actual 
working of natural laws and more of the meaning of the 
order of the world we cannot count it such an imperfect 
world that its control by a perfectly moral God is a puzzle. 

(d) As to the permission of moral evil in the present 


84 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


order, we have the clue already. Morality cannot be 
forced. If the world is to be governed on a moral and 
personal basis at all, it must be with a measure of free- 
dom. It is notable that the later mechanistic theory of life 
is required to change the whole tone of its moral teaching. 


—— 


For that theory personal responsibility must be entirely j 


abandoned or re-worded so that it means something 
different. If God is a person, then moral persons must 
find their way to fuller morality by the use of their 


liberty. That is the way in which families are trained. — 


Why does not a good God intervene to prevent floods 
and plagues and wars and other evils? A finite being 
may not hope to give a final answer, but some things 
seem fairly clear. If God did intervene, there would 
soon be a weakening of humanity which would be 


a dear price to pay for the escape. Men are stronger — 


for their fight against natural odds. They are safer 
for their discovery through experience that immorality 


is ruinous. When boys are always being prevented 


by others from doing wrong, they lose their per- 


sonal character. They must be taught rationally that evil — 


is hurtful. Parents are not always intervening. “Teachers 
are not always preventing pupils from errors. Rulers are 
not always hindering their subjects from doing unworthy 
things. There are only some methods whereby such inter- 
ference is legitimate. We do not know, but it may easily 


be that God is using all the methods which wisdom counts — 
legitimate to control the evil of the world. All this must 


be said in humility. We do not know why evil is not 
more violently controlled in the universe, but we do see 


that such results as we have named may come from God's — 
attitude toward it. So, even in the presence of the moral — 
evil of the world, the Christian view of God as perfectly | 


moral and righteous can be maintained. 


ce -.. 


REGARDING GOD 85 
Vv 


The central element in the Christian conception of God 
is his love./It is the distinguishing characteristic of the 
gospel of Christ. The idea is too vital to be fully de- 
fined. When the first Christian writers tried to express 
what they understood by the love of God and the love 
which they were to bear to each other, they could find no 
word adequate and one was made from a familiar Greek 
root for the purpose. “The same difficulty has appeared in 
several languages. “The love of God is broader than the 
measure of man’s mind. One of the earliest erroneous 
teachings against which the Christian Faith had to con- 
tend was that there must be two Gods—one who had 
made the universe, severe, unloving, exacting in his justice, 
unmerciful; and another God whom Christ revealed, a 
loving Father, merciful and forgiving, tender and helpful. 
The Christian Faith in its very earliest forms refused to 
accept any such distinction. There are not two Gods. 
The only God is the loving Father of whom Jesus spoke. 
But of course this brings to any thoughtful mind one of 
the gravest problems which the Christian Faith must meet 
when it asserts the love of God and yet declares his control 
of the world, namely, the existence in the world-order of 
pain and suffering. Among men, love seeks to shield its 
loved ones from pain and sorrow. Mothers, even in the 
animal order, will sacrifice their own lives for their young; 
they will do it much more freely in the human order. 
And yet in the universe there is great sorrow, pain, 
suffering. How should this be in the world of a loving 
God? 

Part of the answer is the presence of moral evil in the 
‘world. That will be sure to produce suffering in any 
sound moral order. Pains of conscience, sense of un- 
worthiness, the punishment of ill-doing, need give us no 
concern just now. No parent can be loving who does not 


86 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


permit such suffering when wrong-doing has occurred. 
It would be the denial of love to prevent the results of 
sin in the hearts of men when those results are the warn- 
ing voice of nature against an evil way. And it would 
be a denial of a rational order if good and bad conduct 
brought the same results. But, sad as these pains are and 
deep as they run, they are not the problem before us when 
we assert the love of God. Unlike moral evil, the pain 
of the world often smites wholly irresponsible beings, 
merely sentient beings, like animals, as well as human 
beings. Meanwhile, there are multitudes of little children 
and other human beings who suffer great and long-con- 
tinued pain, while every life is marked by sorrow, and 
grief appears among all men. It is a fact for every nation 
and must be faced by every religion, but notably by a 
faith which asserts that the God whom it worships is one 
of love. ) 
(a) So far as suffering appears among animals, it is 
quite certain that its amount and severity are much less 
than they seem to human beings. The conduct of 
wounded animals and the experience of human beings in- 
jured in the ways to which animals are liable confirm this 
belief. There is doubtless lacking in them also the ele- 
ment of resentment which so marks the suffering of human 
beings, specially when they feel that they are not directly 
to blame for their pain. But the principle remains the 
same. ‘The pain is there and it seems out of place in the 
world where love reigns. Something may be said of the 
fact that physical suffering is the result of a misuse or abuse 
of the sentient system, and we are again brought to the 
argument which was used regarding moral evil. A ner- 
vous system which can register pleasure by its excitation 
will certainly be capable also of registering pain if it be 
misused, and the only warning that can be given of its 
misuse is in the pain which accompanies such a condition. 


REGARDING GOD 87 


When an oculist was testing a patient whose optic nerve 
seemed to be destroyed, he darted a ray of light into the 
eye on an electric current, and when the patient cried out 
in pain, he said, ‘““Thank God!”’ for it proved that the 
nerve was not dead. If it could suffer, it was alive. If it 
could not suffer, it could not be made to rejoice in seeing. 
At any rate, we do not know any way whereby a nervous 
system could be made to serve the needs of animal life 
either safely or satisfactorily without the danger of pain. 
Moreover, it is easy to see that physical pain can be accom- 
panied by spiritual emotions either like or unlike it, show- 
ing that the two have no necessary connection. If aman 
foolishly or recklessly thrusts his hand into the flame, it 
is burned, and the burn brings with it physical pain ac- 
companied by a sense of shame and ill-desert. But if the 
same man burned his hand in a heroic rescue of a child 
from a burning building, the physical pain would be the 
same, but it would be borne as a badge of honor. If it 
should eventually appear that pain in the world serves 
moral ends or even social ends, it would be easy to justify 
it in a sound moral and loving order. 

(b) It is certain also that pain and sorrow have their 
large part in human life in widening human sympathy 
and creating wider fellowship. One of the elements in the 
life of Christ which endears him to his followers is his 
endurance of pain. He was a man of sorrows and ac- 
quainted with grief. He shared the sorrows of others, 
he relieved their pain and gave them back their liberties, 
lost in suffering. In the hour of his own great crisis he 
passed through the depths of anguish. His followers have 
often been sustained in their own sorrow and suffering by 
his example, and by feeling that they too may contribute 
to the good of the world as they see he did. One of these 
followers wrote in the early days, ‘‘I rejoice in my suffer- 
ings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is 


88 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his 
body’s sake, which is the church.” This is the high art 
of converting suffering into triumph, by connecting it 
with the experience of God himself. The Christian idea 
of God as a loving Father utterly forbids any thought of 
him as passive, sitting remote from the struggles and 
sufferings of humanity. A God who does not suffer 
with his people could never command their love. Men 
whose lives have never been touched by sorrow always lack 
a note of sympathy which would give power to their 
contact with other men. When a heart knows pain it 
grows broader. It may well be worth while to permit 
sorrow and suffering if that permission results in such 
widened living. But, of course, no such explanation 
shows why some other method of gaining the result might 
not have been discovered. 

(c) Another use of the presence of sorrow and pain 
in a moral world is in their developing the spirit of per- 
sonal mastery. Endurance has its large place in character. 
We have already mentioned two types of heroism. One 
is the heroism of the emergency, readiness to meet a sudden 
demand even at the cost of life, grace to meet a sudden 
need. This is the heroism of martyrdom. History is 
richer for its existence. But the other type of heroism 
is more frequent and less noticeable. It is the heroism 
of the long pull, readiness to undertake the difficult, 
unpleasant task and hold on at it, grace in the grind which 
seems unending but which one could escape if one de- 
manded escape. This takes a permanence of will that may 
not be required in martyrdom. And this explains why 
some martyrs are nobler in their deaths than they were in 
their lives. They had the heroism of the emergency 
without the heroism of the commonplace. But, for the 
development of this high heroism of endurance, nothing 
is equal to the presence of sorrow and limitation. 


Oe oe ee ae, 


REGARDING GOD 89 
(d) The Christian Faith makes much of another 


element in the situation—the eternal life for which this 
present life is only an introduction. This could never 
compensate for the smallest injustice in the pain of the 
present life, but its reality may help to explain how a 
loving God may permit or secure experiences whose result 
appears in the later life. If this life is a school for eternity, 
then there might be in it experiences such as all students 
know in common life, experiences which would be utterly 
mysterious if there were not a purpose in them which 
would be fulfilled in life after school discipline is over. 
An early Christian writer expressed the matter in this 
way: ‘Our light affliction, which is for the moment, 
worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal 
weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are 
seen but at the things which are not seen: for the things 
which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not 
seen are eternal.’’ It is not the Christian idea that eternal 
realities are entirely in the future. Instead, they exist 
and are being served in this present time. The things 
which endure are the invisible ones and they are served by 
experiences of pain and suffering. [he same writer says 
again, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time 
are not worthy to be compared with the glory which 
shall be revealed to us.’”’ If the plan of God is taken as 
a whole and this life is serving the needs of the remainder 
of life, then any present experience which enriches 
character for the future may easily be within the fatherly 
love of God. 

But all this is merely a statement of the uses that may 
be made of sorrow and pain. It is no effort to explain 
their origin apart from the presence in the world of moral 
evil which would carry full explanation of its own results. 
The Christian believer does not claim to understand or 
interpret God beyond human limits. The suggestions 


90 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


are given as showing why the presence of pain and suf- 
fering and sorrow does not dampen the assurance of the 
Christian that God is supremely and unfailingly loving. 
Indeed, instead of interpreting God’s love in the presence 
of his suffering, the Christian interprets the suffering 
in the light of God’s love. Pain and loss and suffer- 
ing are easier to bear when there is a loving God 
who can bring good out of them or can serve some 
large and good ends through them. Humanity is hopeless 
in presence of such conditions if there is no such God 
and it is left to bear as best it may or escape if it can. 

In the Christian Faith this love of God is not mesely 
general good will to his universe. It includes also a 
care for the individuals who make up the human race, 
for the last and poorest of them and for the best and finest 
as well. All human distinctions are incalculable in 
presence of such a being as the infinite God. When two 
men stand side by side, we may notice that one is two 
or three inches taller than the other, but when they are 
standing before a great mountain, the few inches make 
no difference. The differences among men, whereby some 
are rich and some are poor, some are prominent and some 
are obscure, some are learned and some are ignorant— 
these cannot:+seem very great when one thinks of God. 
Yet there are always some who think that God cannot 
care for small things because he is so great. Christ's 
striking word about this has already been quoted. God 
numbers the hairs of men’s heads. He notes the move- 
ments of small birds. This is the meaning of his infinite 
wisdom and power. It has no limits such as must be set 
on our frail human abilities. One of Christ’s parables 
was about a flock of sheep numbering one hundred. One 
sheep wandered, but the shepherd noted its absence and 
after enfolding the ninety and nine, he set out through 
the night and rain until he found the wanderer and brought 


REGARDING GOD } 9] 


it home rejoicingly. So, Christ said, God does with 
human beings. No one of them is so obscure that he is 
not regarded. 

A university teacher in America was much impressed 
with the vastness of the universe and told his class that 
anyone who supposed God could pay any special heed 
to his needs or his prayers showed that he had never 
looked through a telescope. He thought that a God 
who must direct and maintain so vast an order as the 
telescope reveals could not be expected to regard individual 
men. But why not? Do not individuals make up the 
great mass? Where would the vast universe be if its 
smallest parts did not exist? How could the great universe 
be maintained if its details were not maintained? And are 
we not measuring the infinite God by our own small 
power? If we had to control so vast a universe, certainly 
we would have no power left for smaller details, but 
that does not mean that God’s infinite power would be 
taxed by a vast universe. In the West it appears that 
many men have expanded their ideas of the universe more 
rapidly than their idea of God. With a vastly enlarged 
universe and a God adequate for only a small universe, 
it is clear that thought of God’s concern for all the indi- 
viduals of the race seems difficult. In any. clear under- 
standing of the infinity of God, the dimensions of the 
universe and the multiplicity of its concerns are negligible 
considerations. God is as adequate for a vast universe 
as for a small one. 

Christians find in this reality the ground for their 
prayers. A loving God, willing only good to his creatures, 
is not bound in his own universe so that he cannot or 
will not do what they need. ‘To answer a right prayer 
or to grant a right petition, the universe need not be 
altered. It need only be controlled according to the 
principles of love. Prayer is not a plea for the changing 


aD 







yA THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


of God’s order of the world. It is placing on his heart 
the needs of those who love him and who desire his 
gracious will to be done. It rests on his power and his 
love. He is able and he is willing to do what is best 
for his creatures. When persons are involved, the 
expression of such power and love is not mechanical; it 
may wait on the expression of desire in those who offer 
the petition. There are many things which a loving 
parent can give his child without his desire, but there 
are some things which cannot be given except as the child 
develops and expresses in some way the desire for them. 
Any father can give his child a new house or a new coat, 
whether the child wishes it or not, but what father can: 
give a child an education if he does not desire it? What 
father can give a child a good temper or a good spirit if 
the child does not wish it? The only appeal he can make 
in such a case is one worthy of the free personality with 
which he is dealing. So there must be many things. 
which a personal and loving God would eagerly do for 
his children when they wish them, which even he could! 
not do for them apart from their desire, without violating 
their personalities. “The world has a mechanism, but it 
is not a mechanism alone. It is the instrument of a- 
loving God. 
VI 

This Christian idea of God as a holy, loving Father 
carries with it the inevitable assurance that he will be 
a self-revealing God. Such a God will desire to make 
himself known. ‘The Christian Faith declares that he 
has revealed himself in three principal ways: in nature, 
in the experiences of men, and supremely in Jesus Christ. 

(a) The Founder of the Christian religion made large 
use of nature to illustrate and assure the characteristics of 
God and his attitude toward men. Nor was he the first” 


REGARDING GOD 93 


o point out this continuous working of God in the natural 
yrder. There is an almost or quite instinctive inclination 
f even the most savage peoples to find evidences of God 
there. Though they mis-read his message they are not 
ultogether missing it, for he does speak in the powers 
of nature. They read a message of wrath and danger 
when the voice they should hear is one of love and safety. 
But the wisest men do not miss some message there. One 
»f the earliest Christian preachers once told a non-Christian 
audience that God had left a witness to himself in the fact 
of rains and fruitful seasons and the joys of harvest. A 
Christian astronomer said, ‘‘We think thy thoughts after 
thee, O God.” A Christian botanist was found at work in 
his laboratory over his microscope, watching the unfolding 
of a flower. When he was asked what he was doing, he 
replied, “I am watching God at work.’ ‘This is en- 
tirely in the Christian spirit. Such a God as the Christian 
believes in would seek to make himself known in 
every way suited to himself and to those who would learn 
of him. There would be no forcing of his presence on 
unwilling men; not even human persons at their best force 
themselves on each other. But God offers great truths 
about himself to men everywhere. Nature, as a poet has 
said, is a garment of God which reveals while concealing 
his form. 

(b) The self-revelation of God occurs also in the 
experiences of men. Something of God’s reality is in the 
very forming of mankind, as we shall see in the next 
lecture. All men are made in his image. But God is 
constantly revealing himself to the race of men through 
individual men who are his messengers. There is nothing 
strange or unusual in this method. It is the way in 
which all truth becomes known. Nothing is grasped 
by all the race at once. Instead, a few men learn a great 
truth, or possibly only one man learns it. He tells it to 


= 


he THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


another and another and thus it spreads to the world. 


One man discovers the fact of electricity, not all men at | 
once. One man discovers the remedy for a disease, not — 


all men. One man finds a principle of sound government, 


not all men. But as each man makes his discovery, he © 
becomes a trustee for other men. It is God's way of © 
making truth known. It is so in religion. \T he great — 
realities of God come not to all at first, but to one or to” 
a few.) These who receive them are not more loved of God © 
than/are others, though at times they may think them- — 
selves so. They are made trustees by the goodness of L 
God for the help of others. This fact appears in the 


history which prepared the way for the Christian Faith. 


The founder of Judaism was Abraham. In the story of 
his call to receive fuller knowledge of God he was told that — 
he and his family would be blessed, but it was in order ~ 
that they might become a blessing. This is the purpose ~ 
of God always, so far as any record comes to us from ~ 
the past. All men who know any truth about God are 
trustees of that truth, and they owe it to their fellows 


everywhere to make it known. This is God’s gracious 


way of self-revelation, a way which unites the whole race 
of men around great truths. It is not the outcome of 


partiality. It is the way whereby racial unity can be 


developed and truth can become a common possession of | 
all through the ministry of all. It is natural that the 
record of this revelation of God should be made available 
for men everywhere, and so the sacred books appear. 
Truth in any of them ought to be recognized and wel-— 
comed by men of all faiths. Christian adherents offer 
their sacred book with great confidence that men of all 
nations will find the truth of God there. It is a record 
of experiences wherein God has made himself known to. 
men who became trustees of the knowledge thus received. 
They were normal men and their knowledge of God be- 





4 





REGARDING GOD 95 


comes available for all their fellows, not for the unusual 
and exceptional men alone. What God desired them 
to know of him is what he desires all men to know, and 
this is the usual way in which truth spreads through the 
world. 

(c) But all these methods of self-revelation are sur- 
passed for the Christian Faith by the revelation of himself 
which God makes in the person of Jesus Christ. The 
men who first knew and followed Christ were very deeply 
trained in the idea of one God. No men could have 
received with more abhorrence the suggestion of many 
gods. Nor did their conviction at this point change at any 
time. The Christian Faith asserts without diminution 
the unity of God. These early followers of Christ came, 
however, to a strange experience. It involved no theory 
for its own explanation. The theory or doctrine came 
much later, long after the original followers were gone, 
because the early experience persisted. In short, these 
followers of Christ found that they were compelled by 
their experience to take toward him the same attitude 
which they had learned to take toward God. His language 
about himself, revealing his marvelous self-consciousness, 
his self-assertion, which they found entirely supported by 
his achievements in their own lives and in the lives of 
others, his attitude toward their lives and his offering for 
the future, the result of his sacrificial death in their own 
peace of heart, his magnificent program for world mastery 
and salvation, indeed, the whole of their experience with 
Christ forced them to the conviction that in dealing with 
him they were dealing not merely with a man like them- 
selves but with the very fact of God. “They had no 
idea of this when they set out to follow him, nor had 
any of the early believers when they accepted him as their 
Savior. It was as they went on in their experience that 
the conclusion came to them of its own accord, This 


96 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


Christ was very God! The idea could not be more sur- 
prising to any people of the earth than to them. ‘They had 
a long-standing background of belief in a God who did 
not assume human form. They were not, and they 
never for an instant became, polytheists. But there came 
to them the unescapable conviction of the deity of their 
Master. One of the earliest opponents of the Christian 
Faith (and it has made its way from the very first in 
the midst of opposition) voiced his protest against the 
incarnation of God in Christ in terms which would have 
been wholly acceptable to the early disciples but for their 
unescapable experience. He denied the possibility of 
incarnation on three counts: it degrades God by sub- 
jecting him to change; it unduly exalts man by making 
him the object of God’s special care; it has in view an 
unattainable end, the cure of moral evil. But all these 
natural objections become inoperative in the presence of 
Christian experience of God’s revelation of himself in 
Christ. There is no longer an interest in a static God 
who is degraded by change, when that change is merely 
an added expression of infinite love. Indeed, all a priori 
objections to the incarnation fall before the fact of 
incarnation, and that fact has become indubitably sure 
to Christian believers. 

One other item of experience added to the mystery of 
the truth. Before the Master's death, he spoke to the 
disciples of his purpose to maintain their spiritual lives 
and their contact with him through the gift of one whom 
he called the Holy Spirit, saying that in his coming, there 
would be a renewed and special presence of God. Here 
was new mystery, but i: was not so much an intellec- 
tual puzzle as an enrichment of experience. In all that_ 
they were gaining of the knowledge of God they were 
losing nothing which they had known before. God was 
all he had been to their fathers and to their own earlier 


REGARDING GOD Sf 


days, but here were new depths in his personality which 
they had not guessed. At first, they did what any 
earnest people would do—they simply accepted the 
experience and lived it joyously. They had no doctrine 
about it. Here was their glad experience with Christ; 
here was the fulfillment of his word about the coming of 
a distinctive power and presence of God which they 
could not mistake; yet there was still all their fine belief 
about God, unreduced and merely enriched. In the first 
joy of experience no one concerns himself about theories 
or doctrines. When a beautiful sunset occurs, the most 
beautiful of one’s experience, following a gray and 
shadowed day, one stands at first merely to enjoy it, not 
greatly caring for a learned lecture on the optical and 
physical principles involved in it. Afterward there is 
time for the lecture, and in the calmer mood which it 
invokes there may come a deeper pleasure in the experience 
when it recurs. “This was the course of the Christian 
Faith. The rich experiences of God in these three 
aspects continued and for a time were merely accepted. 
It was inevitable, however, that the meaning of them, the 
rationality of them, should be demanded by thoughtful 
minds. To be sure, it is only a certain type of mind that 
demands explanation, but Christianity has drawn to itself 
minds of all types. The distinctively philosophical type 
appeared early in the history, and then this apparently 
conflictive group of experiences was analyzed. ‘The result 
was the forming of a doctrine, as a rationalizing of the 
experiences, which is now known as that of the Trinity 
of God. It asserts his true unity. There are not three 
Gods; there is but one God. Yet within his unity is a 
tich personality which is manifested in the threefold 
distinctions, which are called in Christian speech, the 
Father, the Son and the Spirit. There has been much 
philosophical discussion regarding the eternal reality here 


98 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


revealed, but the Christian Faith is committed to no 
philosophy of it. If the great fact is true, that the one 
God exists in a threefold distinction, then the Christian 
experience becomes rationalized. But the doctrine is not 
and has never been the main fact for the Christian Faith. 
The main fact has always been the rich experience of God 
which first suggested the doctrine. It was because believers 
found God in Christ, became sure of God as a present 
fact in the Holy Spirit without losing at any point theif 
assurance of the infinite Father to whom both Christ 
and the Holy Spirit bore witness, that the doctrine came 
into being. Its refinements and philosophical niceties 
since that time have not always helped the Faith, but it 
is not the doctrine which the Faith offers to the non- 
Christian world. It offers, instead, the great experiences 
of God which gave it birth. Any man who follows Jesus 
Christ faithfully has caught the genius of the Christian 
Faith. In its fullness he will also find the experiences 
which make the idea of the Triune God reasonable and 


joyously acceptable. For that idea brings assurance of — 


the complete supply of every need of the human heart for 
God. The heart needs a God vastly beyond itself, 
holding the universe and all its destinies in his mighty 
hands—and God is the Father. The heart needs a God 
who meets it on its own level, sharing its experiences, 
knowing its struggles, and bringing help for victory— 
and God is the Son. The heart needs a God who stands 
in closest relation to it, entering its very life, showing 


himself part of its daily experiences—and God is the 


Holy Spirit. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity 1s 
not chiefly intellectual, and it does not first justify itself 


to the intellect. It is chiefly experiential, justifying itself 


to the heart of a believer. Afterward, inevitably, it 


brings satisfaction also to the intellect, since the heart — 


__—— " 


REGARDING GOD 99 


cannot long hold what the intellect rejects, just as the 
intellect cannot long hold what the heart rejects. 


Vil 


The Christian conviction regarding God finds its fullest 
‘expression when it uses the word Father to describe him. 
The word means much more than creator or even pre- 
server. It involves love and fellowship such as any good 
earthly father desires and maintains with his children. 
He is to be loved and worshiped, but none the less, obeyed. 
The Christian stands in holy awe of God, seeking to know 
his will, assured that in his will is man’s peace. He is 
committed by his faith to obedience to God’s will, but it 
is a joyous obedience to One who deserves all honor and 
love. No greater service can be rendered by one to another 
than to call him to the love and service of such a God 
as he whom Christ taught men to call Father. It is to 
that love and service that the Christian Faith would call 
the whole world. It issues the call in full appreciation 
of all other ideas of God in the world, believing that in 
this conception of a holy, loving Father is the fulfill- 
ment of the hopes and desires of all earnest seekers after 
God. Here, it believes, is the goal of that passionate quest 
for God which has ennobled and beautified the history of 
humanity. . 


CHAPTER V 
THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION REGARDING MAN 


It will be recalled that four major interests determine 
the value of any religion for thoughtful men; namely, 
its teaching about God, about man, about the relation 
between God and man and about the relation between 
man and man. Our discussion at this time brings us 
to the second of these determining subjects. What does 
the Christian religion teach about man? 

It would seem that opinions about man would be 
easiest to form and most certain of universal acceptance. 
Surely men know themselves, whatever else is hid from 
them. But that is far from being the case. Few sub- 
jects attract more debate and result in wider divergence 
than this very matter. A Christian poet said long ago 
that the proper study of mankind is man. He might have 
added that it is also the most difficult study of mankind. 
The fact is that we know more definitely to-day about 
the movements of the planets in the heavens than about 
the working of the heart and mind of man. We know 
more about the laws that emerge in the relations of the 
stars than we do about the controlling influences in human 
society. The two most chaotic departments of science in’. 
the West are those of psychology and sociology, the o 
sciences in which man himself is most intimately involved. A 
There remain many students who question if either of 
these departments can properly be called a science, and 


100 


REGARDING MAN 101 


many of those who reckon them scientific are more eager 
to be scientific in their treatment than to be entirely true 
to all the facts involved, since those facts are exceedingly 
baffling. 

If any man feels that there are no more mysteries to 
be cleared and no more problems to be solved let him turn 
upon himself and seek the springs of his own conduct, the 
grounds of his feelings, the processes of his intellect, com- 
paring them with the same conditions among his fellows, 
and he will find that he is far from final knowledge of 
the mystery that lies nearest to him. Only men who 
have not thought seriously about it €an count the heart 
of man an open book. It is sometimes said that the 
West cannot understand the East nor the East the West, 
and there are some who add that never the twain can 
meet. ‘This would mean that world unity is impossible. 
But, for that matter, the same thing is frequently said in 
narrower fields. We are told that the English and the 
Irish can never understand each other, and that the 
Londoner and the man from the provinces think so dif- 
ferently that they cannot hope to agree. Chinese are 
said not to be able to fathom the Japanese mind, and 
no one is considered able to fathom the Chinese mind. 
In an English paper recently it was said that only a Sikh 
can understand a Sikh. All this runs back to a far more 
radical fact—that no man understands himself. The 
Scotch poet wished for some one who would give us 
power to see ourselves as others see us. [hat would 
doubtless be a help. But a greater help would be to see 
ourselves as we really are. The Greeks advised that the 
study begin there, when they put over the door of a 
temple: ‘Know thyself.’”’ The most difficult man to 
know accurately is one’s self. The Christian Scripture 
speaks in one place of the heart, the inner reality, as being 
deceitful above all things. It merely calls attention to 


102 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


what any man knows if he has tried to examine himself, 
for there are subterfuges of explanation and evasions of 
finality which make the way exceedingly difficult. If a 
man knew himself as he is, then he might more safely trust 
himself to know other men as they are. One evidence of 
the uniqueness of Christ mentioned in the story of his 
life is that he knew what was in man and needed not that 
any man should tell him. Certainly that is far more 
than the rest of us can say. The past century has been 
largely devoted to the scientific study of the external 
world, the macrocosm. This century bids fair to be 
largely devoted to the study of the internal world, the 
microcosm. Some day we shall know more of man. 
But already we know enough for racial and world unity, 
if we care to use our knowledge. Pending deeper knowl- 
edge some obvious facts can be mentioned, facts of which 
Christian adherents are convinced. 

As we noted in stating the Christian conviction regard- 
ing God, so here; there have been large volumes written 
to express in its fullness the Christian idea of man. Yet 
here also we venture to gather into one widely used phrase 
the heart of that idea: the Christian conviction is that 
man ts a creation and a child of God. ‘The phrase links 
him to God by two cords, and these cords are noted in two 
expressions in the Christian Scripture—that God made 
man “‘out of the dust of the ground,’ and that God 
made man “in His own image.’’ Like the rest of creation 
man is created by God; unlike the rest of creation he is a 
child of God. He has much in common with the rest of 
the universe; in his most distinctive elements he is unique 
in the universe. It is further strikingly phrased in the 
Bible in the saying that when God made man of the dust 
of the ground He breathed into him the breath of life 
and so man became a living soul. Man comes both from \ 
dust and from deity, but always by the power and purpose © 


REGARDING MAN 103 


of God himself. Our discussion during this hour will 
be devoted to the fuller analysis of this statement and of 
its implications. 


J 


Questions of the origin and of the nature of man 
intertwine and can hardly be discussed separately, but 
the Christian Faith is more concerned with what man 
is than with the way he came to be so. In due course 
we must consider the origin of man in view of the results 
of the recent study of antiquity, but we begin our study 
with thought of man as he is to-day. 

In the Christian belief man is animal and spiritual 
at the same time. 1. He is_part and partel of_nature. 
He has much in common with the brutes, both in the 
lower and higher orders. He is subject to the forces of 
nature at many points. He falls before its storms like 
a tree, he feels its cold, he suffers from its heat, he requires 
its food and drink, he is born as other animals are born 
and he dies as they die. It may be if one could come 
from another planet with no power to appreciate higher 
attainments, man would seem weaker than many of the 
brutes. He is small beside the elephant, slow beside the 
horse, clumsy beside the tiger, groveling beside the eagle, 
gross beside the insect, feeble beside the lion. Yet he 
masters and directs them all! One of the poets who 
preceded _the Christian Faith once exclaimed, ‘“‘When I 
consider God’s heavens, the work of his fingers, the moon 
and the stars which he has ordained, what is man that 
God is mindful of him or the son of man that God visits 
him?’? Modern knowledge of the universe adds to the 
wonder of the distinction. Man is an insignificant figure 
in the vast universe. Yet he _is part_and_ parcel of it. 
It is not as though he were a foreign substance introduced 
into nature and the natural order. On his physical and 


104 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


purely animal side he is exactly where he belongs. The 
Christian Faith would not want to deny this connection. 
Instead, it asserts that the earth is the work and possession 
of God and that man as a creation of God, should count 
himself part of the earth and find no disgrace in that fact. 
In the effort to state the dignity of man, the loathsome or 


ignoble phases of animal or inanimate life are sometimes | 


accented. But in the Christian view all these are parts 
of an order which is under the guiding hand of God, 
and such phases are objectionable only to man, not in 
themselves. There is no shame in the intimate relation 
of man as one part of God’s order with any other part of 


that order. It is only when man loses his distinctness — 


from the rest of the order that shame arises. 


2. For, if man is the product of the physical order — 


and if he is still intimately connected with it, he has also 
become or has been made vastly superior to the main 
order. He is more than animal, more than physical.) An 
American student in this field, speaking not for Christian 
argument but purely as an historian, remarks that “‘no 
fact in nature is fraught with deeper meaning than this 
two-sided fact of the extreme physical similarity and 
enormous psychical divergence between man and_ the 


group of animals to which he traces his pedigree.’” An- — 
other eminent scholar in this field has noted that while 
any study of “‘comparative psychology” of animals and — 
man is sure to bring out striking similarities, it brings to — 
light more clearly still the wide differences between the © 
two groups of beings. This is the meaning-of the Chris- 
tian phrase which indicates that man is made “in the © 


image of God.’ It does not imply that he is himself 
deity nor that he is ever to be elevated to the level of deity. 


u 


Always he will be finite as he is now, not absorbed into — 
deity nor lost in the totality of life nor swallowed up in 


the depths of infinity. But man is in the image of God 


¢ 
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| 
ij 


REGARDING MAN 105 


in special sense. His nature is formed after the likeness 
of God’s nature. His powers are, within his finite range, 
like the powers of God in the infinite range. Man’s 
personality is his unique distinction. However nearly 
animals approach this high estate, they do not attain to 
it. In the fullness of his personality man stands above 
all animals. The Christian Faith asserts this of all men, 
savage or civilized. There is a far wider chasm between 
the lowest human being and the highest animal than 
between the lowest and highest human beings. Among 
human beings the difference is in degree; between animals 
and men the difference is in kind. ‘The unfailing test 
is the development that proves possible for the lowest 
man and the highest animal. Men can be brutal, more 
selfish, more cruel than animals. “They can be degraded, 
coarse, savage, so low in the scale that other men would 
prefer to live with animals, so inhuman that other men 
despair of their possibilities. Yet if these men at their 
lowest and these animals at their highest are taken under 


_kindly and intelligent tutelage and their inherent powers 


Tas 


brought into fullest play, no one can question what the 
outcome will be. The next generation, under such 
guidance, will reveal the wide divergence in the natures of 
the two groups, and presently the human species will be 
what the animals never can become. This difference is 
not injected into the situation; it is merely revealed in 
the situation. It was there all the time. And the 
fundamental difference is that in man at his lowest there 
is personality, while in brutes at their highest there is 


not personality. Just now we are not discussing how 


man becomes a person; we are emphasizing the fact that 
he is a person. In this fact, however attained, he shows 
himself to be in the image of God. 

(a) One result is that he cannot be fully satisfied 


with the things which the earth offers. He needs and 


106 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


should use them. Christianity is not an ascetic faith, 
though it persistently demands the control of all animal 
passions and desires. It warns men against living in and 
for the world alone, but it reminds them that the world 
is God’s gift and urges the right use of it and its pleas- 
ures. Man is always to be the master of his desires, never 
their slave. A philosopher of Christendom has declared 
that, apart from religion, the end of man is to secure an 
abundance of the good things of this world, with life, 
health and peace to enjoy them. ‘This would never satisfy 
the Christian idea of man’s chief end. The Christian Faith 
does not despise the good things of life, though it has had 
its monks and ascetics. It merely persists in its declara- 
tion of the higher levels of human interests. As a later 
Christian student has pointed out, it is certain that in the 
natural order of events the world and all that is in it will 
be destroyed and cease to exist in its present form. The 
human race will go the way of all the earth. All the 
material things it has made or accomplished will pass away. 
But the Christian Faith does not admit that what has 
been most distinctive in humanity shall pass away. Char- 
acter, personality, rationality, are not destructible but per- 
manent. [hey become a permanent contribution to the 
universe. Christ once pointed out that if men live for 
purely physical things they are no better than the brutes, 
and they bring their lives down to brute level, whereas 
they are meant to move on a higher plane. The world 
is for man to use, because he belongs to it, but it is meant 
for him to direct, because he is above it. 

(6) For the same reason, man is not the slave of the 
forces of the physical world. He must submit to their 
order in many ways, and he finds limits set on' what he 
can do in the natural realm. But he is steadily learning’ 
to become master of the forces of nature, directing them 
to ends which are not of their own choosing. He is of 


REGARDING MAN 107 


nature and above it. Many philosophers find it difficult 
to adjust this fact to their view of the world. They think 
of the universe as a closed system with no room in it for 
freedom or purely rational action. One teacher has re- 
cently said that free will is a mere matter of words, rep- 
resenting no reality. He adds that the term ought not to 
be used. But it is utterly impossible to be consistent with 
this view. For example, no such counsel as his own 
should be given if there is no freedom. Why tell us that 
we ought not to use a word if we are not able and free 
to cease to do so? We would not tell any man to do or 
cease to do anything which he had no liberty to change. 
All arguments against freedom of the will imply that it 
exists. [here are mistaken claims for it, undoubtedly, 
but the reality seems assured. Man is not a mere puppet 
in the hands of a series of physical forces. He has some- 
thing in his make-up which is best described as freedom. 
He can choose as nothing else in nature seems able to do. 
The Christian Faith declares this in all its insistence on the 
call of God to man. Man can obey the call, or it is ut- 
terly useless to issue it. 

The freedom of man in nature is not, and never seems 
to be, absolute. It is always within limits. Man cannot 
go to the moon, but he has learned to fly through the air. 
He cannot live in heat or cold beyond a certain degree, 
but he has learned to extend both degrees and to make 
himself comfortable in heat or cold, not by instinctive 
adaptation as in the case of some brutes, but by rational 
activity and by direction of forces from their usual course 
into channels of his own desire. Man cannot do without 
food, but he has made for himself kinds of food which 
he desires, and has increased or diminished the supplies of 
nature, not merely discovering what he wishes as animals 
do and accepting the quantities which nature provides, 


108 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


but asserting his own reason, adapting plants, developing 
new species, planting crops, clearing away growths of 
nature, and showing himself vastly superior to other ani- 
mals. Man cannot do without shelter; he is even more 
dependent upon it than most animals, but he makes for 
himself shelter which animals never would devise, he orna- 
ments shelter until it becomes beautiful, satisfying his 
asthetic sense, he constructs vast dwellings far beyond his 
actual wants, as animals never do. He turns the need of 
shelter into desire for fellowship and comfort. In order 
to do this he utilizes materials in nature which seemed 
at first impossible, he constructs new combinations of ma- 
terial which do not exist in the usual order of nature, he 
overcomes the limitations of nature by using forces of 
nature which had never before been used. At all points 
man shows himself masterful in nature, not its servant. 
Yet he is constantly being reminded that he moves within 
the limits set in the order of nature... There is truth in 
an old saying of Francis Bacon that. ‘‘nature is not con- 
quered except by obedience.’ . But there is more than 
this. At certain points man can redirect nature. There 
is no reason to think that a Cologne cathedral or a Taj 
Mahal or a Buddhist monastery or a modern university 
lay in the path of natural progress. For their appearance 
there was an acceptance of the law of progress and of the 
material supplied by nature, but then there came a re- 
directing of the forces of nature. It is as when a subdued 
race accepts its position and then quietly sets to work to 
become the masters of those who have subdued it. This 
has occurred in history; it occurs constantly in man’s re- 
lation to nature. Some things man cannot do, irrational 
or anti-natural things, but within the limits set for him 
he has large and forceful freedom. He is not the slave 
of the natural order. 


REGARDING MAN 109 
II 


The plainest mark of this superiority over physical 
nature is in the fact that man is rational. When he 
reaches his development he proves to be a thinking, plan- 
ning, executing being. He is made in God’s image in this 
sense, for God is rational. A famous saying among Chris- 
tian writers is that of Blaise Pascal: ‘‘Man is but a reed 
and the weakest in nature but he is a reed that thinks. 
It does not need the universe to crush him; a breath of 
air, a drop of water will kill him. But even if the ma- 
terial universe overwhelm him, man would be more noble 
than that which destroys him, because he knows that he 
dies, while the universe knows nothing of the advantage 
it obtains over him.’’ Whenever a human being refuses 
to act on the impulses of reason he forfeits in some degree 
his eminence in the order of life. Blind passions, brutal 
appetites, gross animalities, are always unworthy of true 
humanity, for they are a sacrifice of man’s most distinctive 
trait of rationality. Herein lies man’s marvelous power 
to forecast and to direct the future events of his life. 
What animals often do by instinct, man does by reason; 
but his reason goes much farther. The Christian Faith 
magnifies this power by demanding from its adherents 
_the use of their rational power at their best. Asa religion 

_ it is simple enough for the youngest child to accept, but it 
is also profound enough to tax the powers of the greatest 
intellect. Sometimes complaint is made that Christianity 
contains difficult truths. That is part of its glory. For 
it purposes to meet the needs of the highest as well as 
the lowliest. If man is at his best when he reasons, then 
religion must be able to challenge him at that point and 
propose to him questions which are still unanswered and 
problems still unsolved. It is always fatal for a religion 
when any man can think out beyond it. When a man 


110 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


outgrows his gods, then they are_gods no longer. An) 
early Christian says is that a God understood would be 
God no longer. It is true. Some measure of understand- ) 
ing must mark all true belief in God, but a God whose | 
entire reality is already grasped can no longer command — 
the advancing spirit. 

For the purposes of religion it is almost equally impor- 
tant to urge that man is moral. He is a being who meas- 
ures conduct by the standards of right and wrong. It 
does not now concern us how he came to this position. 
Wise men differ widely about that. But certainly man 
as he is to-day has the power of knowing right and wrong, 
approving himself when he is right and condemning him- 
self when he is wrong. Conscience is one of the best as- 
sured powers in the human nature. Man can sit in judg- 
ment on himself. He can sit in moral judgment also on 
social customs, changing the accepted moral codes, defying 
them, rising above them. Something within him often 
demands that he shall do so, and he shows himself to be 
unworthy if he does not yield to it. Christian writers 
often call conscience the voice of God in the human soul, 
and it deserves the name when it is rightly understood. 
It is often the voice of the God who made the world, de- 
claring against abuse or neglect of duty. Morality is far 
more than a statement of what is true; it is a statement 
of what ought to be true, and a denial of the validity 
of something that is true and should not be. For this 
reason morality cannot be identified with knowledge or 
mere scientific progress. It is not certain whether a man 
is morally better or worse for knowing some things, It 
is possible to make sharper rascals by some forms of edu- 
cation. Good science often goes with bad morality. The 
discoveries of science may be magnificent instruments for 
morality, but they are no substitutes for morality. One 
might hear of two men, each of whom has picked the 


REGARDING MAN ; 111 


lock of another man’s safe. Each may do it in the same 
way and with the same scientific precision and skill. Yet 
we condemn one and praise the other, for one has picked 
the lock to tob the safe, and the other has picked it to 
secure valuable papers which the owner could not secure 
because of the loss of the combination. There is a scien- 
tific way of robbing a bank but there is no moral way of 
doing it. Science and morality may apply to the same 
act but they may not agree about it. A skilled operative 
may look at the evidence for a bank robbery and praise 
it as one of the most skillful he ever saw, noting the scien- 
tific knowledge involved; but an ethicist could not praise 
it, though he sees all the marks which attracted the other. 
‘The same observer may be both a scientist and an ethicist, 
approving and condemning the same act. Many illustra- 
tions make it clear that moral qualities are peculiar in 
themselves and not merely a phase of human activity and 
skill. One such illustration may be considered. 

In an important American city the door of a bank’s 
money vault became fastened and could not be opened. 
It was held by an intricate lock whose combination failed 
to work. Search was made for most expert locksmith, 
whose skill was a match for the intricacy of the lock and 
his sense of touch so delicate that he could know when the 
tumblers were falling into place. Such a man was found, 
admittedly one of the most expert men available for that 
task. But he was found in the penitentiary of the state, 
where he was imprisoned for opening the doors of other 
men’s vaults. Permission was received for him to go 
to the city and exercise his skill on the difficult lock. He 
soon mastered it, and then was returned to the prison to 
continue his punishment for his earlier lack of good will. 
His skill did not insure morality. And this possible 
divorce between intellectual training and skill and the 
moral qualities explains why the Christian Faith is con- 


bye THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


cerned that education shall not be counted complete with- 
out the moral disciplines. Man is not rational alone; he 
is moral as well. He does not need science alone; he needs 
religion and ethics also. 

A French writer has distinguished between science and 
religion at four points: 1. Science is without moral 
distinctions. For it a fact is a fact, whatever its moral 
quality, and it furnishes no ground for classifying some 
as right and some as wrong, or some as good and some 
as bad. 2. Science is without humaneness. It tends to 
reduce man’s importance in the world, to make him more, 
not less, like the animal world around him. It does not 
dignify humanity; it tends instead to lower human value. 
3. Science is without human destiny. The future it 
discovers for humanity is mere extinction. It says noth- 
ing of eternity. It fails to discover and honor the unique- 
ness of man as revealed in his impulses for eternity. 4. 
Science provides no human liberty. It makes free will an ~ 
illusion and personal responsibility a mere phrase. On 
these four accounts he condemns science as a guide of life 
for humanity. In so far as science deserves the four char- 
acteristics, it deserves also the condemnation. Especially 
is it true that anything that reduces morality to mere prac- 
tice or opinion helps to take away from man the highest 
of his religious distinctions. 

But no one would repudiate this conception of science 
more earnestly than many scientific men themselves. They 
feel that such conclusions are not really those of science. 
The conclusion that man has no form of moral freedom 
and that he is merely one phase of a mechanistic universe 
does not come from careful observation and narration of 
facts, but from an a priori judgment based on observa- 
tions in other fields. All human consciousness bears wit- 
ness to moral liberty, human society always proceeds upon 
the supposition that such liberty exists, each man is com- 


REGARDING MAN 113 


pelled to treat other men as though they had liberty, no 
man finds it possible to estimate his own conduct or ex- 
periences worthily, apart from such an opinion—all these 
and other similar facts are everywhere admitted. Then 
why are moral liberty and responsibility counted illusions? 
Solely because discoveries in other fields of thought and 
reality reveal a type of cause and effect and a succession of 
forces which preclude freedom, and it is assumed that this 
type must operate in the realm of personality. It is not 
shown that it does so operate; it is taken for granted that 
it must. And the effort is made not to explain the facts, 
but to show that they are not reliable. What they are is 
clear; what they must be on the mechanistic hypothesis is 
shown to be quite different. Of course this is not the 
method of science. It is not scientific to reduce all reality 
to a dead level, when certain phases of it reveal character- 
istics which differentiate it from other phases. A modern 
English scholar writes: ‘“The remarkable advance in our 
knowledge of physics and biology seems to prove the 
soundness of our assumption that the mind of man is not 
merely a by-product of living matter but a new and higher 
type of reality which has come into being in recent stages 
of evolution.”’ The validity of any sound religion or 
ethics is bound up in the existence in man’s nature of 
something which is best described as moral freedom, a 
liberty which involves moral responsibility, the power 
to think and the power to be moral. That is, an endow- 
ment of rationality and morality is an indispensable pre- 
requisite. 


Ii 


The Christian Faith gathers up the three main teachings 
already described—that man is spiritual (or more than 
physical), that he is rational, that he is moral—into the 
one great saying that he is inherently personal. That is the 


114 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


deepest truth about him. Made in the image of the per- 
sonal God, he is himself supremely personal. The pre- 
servation and due development of human personality is a 
supreme duty of society. Lack of reverence for human 
personality as such is the supreme social offense. ‘The 
Christian Faith has always to be asserted at this point, 
and many of those who profess it have failed to obey it 
here. Two outstanding illustrations ought to be men- 
tioned, and they will indicate clearly that the Christian 
Faith is providing correction for what are called Christian 
lands. “They will enforce the saying that it is not Chris- 
tendom but Christianity which is being offered to the 
world to-day. However, it is only fair to add that illus- 
trations could be found in every land of the world. It is 
because Christendom is part of the human order, and not 
because it is Christendom, that they emerge there. 

(a) The rights of human personality should be the. 
standard of relationships in industry. The evil of ma- 
chinery and of modern factory life is greatest in its ruth- 
less disregard of the interests of the human beings who are 
involved. Christ once asked if a man is not better than 
a sheep. Surely we may ask if a man is not better than 
a machine. Christian believers are awakening to the fact 
that the laborer is more important than the labor he per- 
forms. If industry makes garments by destroying girlhood 
and womanhood, society is a loser in the bargain. Jesus 
said no man could gain enough to make up for the loss of 
his soul or his true personality. That is true of the 
social order. No society can ever grow rich enough nor 
comfortable enough to make up for ruining the lives of 
men and women and children in its mills and factories 
and other industries. The hours of human labor, the re- 
wards of labor, the mode of living, opportunities of cul- 
ture, of pleasure and rest, and all such interests are within 
the concern of the Christian Faith. That Faith passes 


REGARDING MAN 115 


severe judgment on its own adherents who neglect this de- 
mand of personality. It has no defense for a system that 
neglects such vital interests. It does not propose that other 
nations copy this neglect in order to be Christian. Instead, 
it declares that in so far as its own adherents deserve this 
condemnation, they are not yet fully Christian. At the 
same time, it is proper to point out how widely the new 
spirit of regard for personality is dominating industry. 
Great experiments are under way in every Christian land 
to discover the best way of serving personality in the fields 
of industry. Such experiments mark many enterprises in 
lands where the Christian Faith is still new. They are of 
the very essence of the Christian teaching about man. 
(b) The other illustration is in the matter of war. 
Sometimes the attack on war is based on its economic cost, 
or its physical waste, or even on its terrible toll of human 
life. “These arguments have their value, but they are not 
apt to have weight when certain great interests are in- 
volved. There are greater things than economic progress 
or physical conservation, and all heroism declares that hu- 
man life is not a final fact to be held dear above all else. 
The true and final attack on war must be at the point of 
its danger to human personality. At most points it sim- 
ply disregards personality. It uses men like things. 
Often in the stress of war men are reckoned at lower 
valuation than things or animals. In its crises men are 
called to disregard the personalities who oppose them and 
to follow practices which tend to degrade their own per- 
sonalities. In the aftermath of war always come bestial 
practices which reduce men to brutes. It cannot be nec- 
essary that human differences shall be dealt with in ways 
that lower the level of the mass of men who take part in 
them. : 
We are not to forget the noble characters in all lands 


116 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


who have taken part nobly in wars. We are not to say 
that war under all conditions and for all purposes has 
been anti-Christian. But we are to say that war is a crude, 
barbaric way of dealing with conditions which could 
have been dealt with worthily at an earlier stage of their 
development, and that it is unthristian to allow condi- 
tions to develop which lead at last to the use of such a 
method. Surgery is proper under the right conditions, 
but no mother would be justified in neglecting an ailment 
of her child until it required the amputation of a limb 
or the removal of an eye. War can be justified, if at all, 
only as a shamefaced acceptance of the consequences of 
one’s neglect of evils which have now become insupport- 
able. It is not too much to say that if another war oc- 
curs similiar to the recent one in Europe, Christian ad- 
herents must accept heavy blame, not for their Faith but 
for their own neglect of their Faith. The accent of the 
Christian Faith on the value of human personality makes 
War a ruinous and wasteful method of dealing with hu- 
man differences. It was not until this phase of its cost 
became clear to Christian believers that they took any 
wide stand regarding it. [hat stand is being made to- 
day, not by meek-eyed pacifists, but by multitudes of 
virile men who realize that wars grow out of emergencies 
which ought not to be allowed to arise. So long as the 
Christian Faith declares for the value of human person- 
ality because of its likeness to divine personality, war 
must be opposed as a principle of national life. 

As to the nature of man, then, the Christian Faith 
holds that he is a creature and also a child of God, part 
of nature yet above nature, a rational being, a moral being 
—in short, a person, made in the image of God. It holds 
that this is true of every man wherever he is and what- 
ever his stage of development. 


REGARDING MAN 117 


IV 


1. The Christian teaching regarding the origin of man 
must not be confused with the scientific discussion of the 
method of his origin. When it is asserted that God created 
man, nothing is determined about the way in which he 
did so. Opinion in Christendom regarding it is divided. 
Some adherents believe the creation to have been immedi- 
ate, a distinct act of God, setting man apart from the rest 
of creation. Other adherents accept the widely held evo- 
lutionary view of man’s origin, insisting equally on the 
fact that it was God’s way of making man. The two 
chief difficulties in the evolutionary theory felt by many 
Christian adherents have been briefly mentioned in an 
earlier lecture. (a) One is that some of its teachers 
allow the mere process to take the place of any power 
or mind controlling and directing the process. This 
eliminates God and his wisdom and power. When a 
Christian finds a teacher of evolution speaking as though 
there were no intelligence in the universe, as though the 
whole process were blind and casual, he finds one of his 
deepest assurances challenged. A universe cannot make 
itself casually or blindly, and then reveal, as this one 
does, so many marks of rationality and purpose. If the 
theory of evolution is held in full light of a personal God 
who originates, maintains and directs the process, then 
one of the principal difficulties before the Christian is re- 
moved. (b) The other serious difficulty with the the- 
ory in some of its forms is that it degrades man from his 
high estate. A pre-Christian poet spoke of man as but 
little lower than the angels. It has been pointed out this 
theory, instead, may make him but little higher than the 
brutes. We have already argued that it would be a mis- 
take to speak as though man had no animal connection, 
but it is as great a mistake to speak as though man had 


118 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


nothing but animal connection. If he is a crea- 
ture, he is also a child, of God. Some enthusiasts for 
the theory of evolution see man so bound with chains 
to the past that he has no more freedom than the 
brutes through whose processes he is declared to have 
come. They rob him of immortality and moral unique- 
ness. ‘They make him no longer a child of the infinite 
personal God. In this form the Christian cannot believe 
in it. However, if the theory is held in view of the fact 
that man is what he is, no matter how he became so, if 
the facts are held to be true whether they fit the theory or 
not, if the facts are always more than the theory—then 
another serious difficulty is removed for the Christian 
adherent. 

(c) It has been felt also that the whole theory of 
evolution conflicts with the teachings of the Bible, but 
this objection does not seem to most Christian thinkers 
a valid one, both because the Bible does not attempt to 
state the method but only the fact of God’s creation, and 
also because a clear understanding of the Bible seems to 
them quite as compatible with the evolutionary method as 
with any other. At any rate, it is to be remembered al- 
ways that the evolutionary view is held as a working 
theory, the best obtainable for explaining the largest num- 
ber of facts now known in nature. It was formed on a 
scientific and not a religious basis, and it will doubtless be 
altered on the same basis as new facts emerge or as modi- 
fications of the theory are required for better explanation 
of facts. ‘There are forms in which it is held by the most 
earnest and devout believers in the Christian Faith. It 
is enough for them that by this method or by any other 
God has produced man, a being such as we have described, 
worthy to be called a being made in the image of God. 

2. In accordance with this view of man’s origin, the 
Christian Faith asserts the unity of the human race. It 





- _ . . 
ee See < — 


REGARDING MAN 119 


is wholly unimportant whether the human race has sev- 
eral geographical origins, though there is a tendency in 
anthropology to declare for single origination. If there 
were several, of which the one in the Bible is to be con- 
sidered merely typical, the race would still be one, be- 
cause it originates in the creative act of God and is all in 
his image. Wherever man appears as man, the Christian 
Faith declares him brother to all other men. In one of 
the earliest incidents recorded in the Christian Scripture, 
a man asks contemptuously, “‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’’ 
No answer is suggested in the story and many have taken 
an affirmative reply for granted. The tone of the Scrip- 
ture teaching suggests a negative reply. A man is not 
his brother’s keeper; instead, he is his brother’s brother, 
and that is very different. A keeper looks down on the 
one whom he keeps; he tries to regulate the other’s con- 
duct according to his own will as a keeper; he settles the 
other’s condition for him as a keeper of sheep settles their 
conditions. There has been quite enough of the ‘‘keeper’ 
spirit among nations, the stronger ‘keeping’ the weaker 
and developing a dominating and directive spirit which 
brings little good. The Christian Faith does not teach 
the ‘“‘keeperhood” of men, but their brotherhood. Its 
adherents have not been true to this conviction, but it 
has been a constant challenge and corrective for the wrongs 
of the society which Christians have formed. ‘There is 
no room in the Christian theory for anything like the 
caste system. It has often had classes of people, but even 
so it has not separated those classes by fixed lines. Always 
it has provided for the passing of men from one class to 
another. It has not believed those classes to be ordained 
of God in such sense that they could not change without 
violating his will. No man is born to a class so that he 
cannot leave it if he will. In Christendom there is a con- 
stant movement from class to class, sometimes by way 


120 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


of industry, sometimes by education, sometimes by mar- 
riage, and in many other like ways. Classes are not fixed 
and final; they are mobile and changeable. It is some- 
times said that social classes are merely the first stages of 
a fixed caste system; some assert that this is the actual way 
in which caste did originate. This may be true, though 
the history is obscure. But it is to be noted that when 
class distinctions do show signs of hardening into com- 
pulsory differences, the Christian Faith enters protest 
against them. It cannot put its sanction on them. And 
the most dangerous element in caste must always be a 
religious sanction. This makes the distinction between 
men hard and fast, linking it to the moral order which 
is the will of God. When Christian adherents have as- 
serted this, they have been challenged by their own Faith. 
Fixed classes are not consonant with the Christian Faith. 

It is interesting and cheering to have the word of a 
notably wise Indian that it is open to question whether 
caste is an integral part of the prevailing faith of India, 
and that the Indian community is gathering its forces for 
the great effort to reform its social order. “This will be 
an heroic task and its severest test will be its dealing with 
a fixed caste system. For all that, no defense can be made 
for some of the class distinctions that occur in Christen- 
dom. All we are now saying is that they are no part 
nor element in the Christian Faith. Essential human 
equality, not in gifts and abilities, not in character nor in 
achievements, but in rights and opportunities for person- 
ality—this is the normal Christian teaching. 

(a) In the past this teaching has been contradicted 
by slavery, the involuntary bondage of one man to an- 
other. Slavery was so much the social practice of the 
period before and during the beginnings of Christianity, 
it was so quietly accepted, that at first the entire thought 
seems to have been to alleviate its evils, maintaining its 


REGARDING MAN | 121 


reality ds a matter of course. As the centuries went on, 
however, it became clear that the principle of human broth- 
ethood, the unity of the race, made such bondage impos- 
sible. Gradually it was eliminated from Christian society. 
Some of its evil influences still remain but they are a testi- 
monial against the indifference with which Christian ad- 
herents have applied the Faith which they profess. The 
Christian Faith will never be content until slavery in all 
its forms and implications is driven from the human race. 
In a right human order no man bends an unwilling knee 
to the power of another man. True leadership, true gov- 
erning, is voluntary. Its right is recognized by those who 
are led or governed, not as lying in power, but as lying 
in service and ability and willingness to serve the general 
good. That is not slavery; it is merely a form of fellow- 
ship. That is what the Christian Faith started men to 
feeling very early in its career, as is shown by the letter 
of one of its early leaders, Paul, to a master who was 
instructed to welcome a returning slave as a brother. 

(b) The Christian conviction of the unity of the 
race is contradicted again by the racial feeling which 
causes such unrest in the world. It is a heritage from a 
poorer past. Color lines and racial distinctions have their 
historical explanation, and this justifies them in the minds 
of some observers. Most students consider racial feeling 
to be among man’s deepest sentiments, however it came 
to exist. Even though that might prove to be true, it 
has no place in the Christian scheme as a permanent bar- 
rier between human beings. There may be wholly legiti- 
mate reasons for one nation to look up to another nation. 
It may have achieved more, it may have a better system 
of government, it may be more enlightened, it may be 
stronger in number or character or ability. It harms no 
nation to look up to another as better than itself. “The 
same thing is true of racial groups. They may be all the 


122 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


better for having their eyes turned upward to racial groups 
which are farther up the slope of human progress. The 
Greek word for man probably means a being who looks 
up, and a true man is never afraid of looking up to one 
who is better than himself. But that is far from what 
is meant by racial antipathy. This is not based on merit 
but on differences which do not run deep except for pur- 
poses of argument. Races do differ, but they are all part 
of the one human race, and their agreements are far deeper 
and more important than their differences. The differ- 
ences between men cut down into, but they do not cut 
down through, the human race. The racial antipathies 
that so mar human relationships to-day magnify human 
differences. The Christian Faith magnifies human like- 
nesses. Many Christian adherents miss this application 
of its teaching, counting it a mere counsel of perfection, 
an ideal unattainable by ordinary humanity; but these 
do not determine the Faith itself. 

Herein lies one of the most difficult problems of the 
world to-day. Until recent years races could live at peace 
in isolation from each other. Racial differences did not 
develop into racial antipathies. Almost every nation took 
it for granted that it was the most advanced nation in 
the world; it assumed as a matter of course that other 
nations were mere barbarians and doubtless envious of its 
own superiority. One reason for isolation in earlier days 
was the desire of each nation to protect its culture from 
the coarseness of other nations. But recent decades have 
thrown the whole human group into such close relations 
that such opinions have become serious. It does not much 
matter how a man acts when no one else is near, but if he 
claims great superiority and peculiar rights in the presence 
of other men, the case is different. Somewhere we must 
find a way of living together as fellow beings, our racial 
differences being recognized at their true worth but not 


REGARDING MAN 123 


magnified into oppositions. Christian believers, for all 
of their failure to be faithful to it, yet offer their Faith 
as the solution of this problem. It is a Faith of a unified 
race, all brothers under the one Father God, all members 
of one race, all needing the same salvation, all capable of 
finding a true fellowship in Jesus Christ. 

‘The Founder of the Christian Faith set for all men an 
example of this brotherhood. He came into a social con- 
dition where marked limitations were set on such customs 
as eating and drinking and physical contact with other 
men. He himself quietly and constantly overlooked these 
limitations. He chose his first group of followers from 
all classes of men, the despised and the favored. He went 
into the homes of all classes, eating with them even when 
people of other classes looked on him with great disfavor 
for doing so. “Then, as in many parts of the world now, 
eating was accepted as sign of social equality; he frankly 
accepted its meaning and ate with all men. He touched 
lepers and other diseased men, helping them in spite of a 
social regulation against doing so. He was accused of be- 
ing friendly to the lowest classes, and the charge was a 
valid one, but it did not prevent his being friendly also 
with the highest classes. “There were marked racial ani- 
mosities in his day which excluded several racial groups 
from the favor of the prevailing society of his race. He 
paid no heed to these animosities, making friends with 
members of these despised races and giving them of his 
best teaching and service quite as freely as to others. 
Moreover, he made it clear that this is the way of the 
Father of whom he was teaching the world. An incident 
is recorded of his speaking to a large group of those who 
despised other racial groups when he reminded his hearers 
of times in history when the choice of God had included 
people who were looked down upon by others, and so 
pointed did the reference seem that the hearers became a 


124 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


murderous mob and tried to kill him. They recognized 
in him a spirit of democracy which would be revolution- 
ary, as indeed it is, even in this later day. The race is 
one, brothers in the midst of differences. There is no 
secure peace for the world apart from this assurance. 


V 


All this conviction about man seems to leave out of 
account the shadow that rests on humanity wherever it 
‘5 seen——the shadow of moral evil, of which something 
was said in the former lecture and which must be the 
background of the next lecture. ‘The Christian Faith 
frankly faces this added element in any full conception 
of man. His present moral state is not what it should be. 
All religions have something to say about the fact in the 
moral nature which Christian teaching calls sin, but 
Christianity is peculiarly a religion of salvation and this 
disturbance of the moral life must challenge its attention 
in a special way. There are men who in their conduct 
and character make it seem almost an irony to speak of 
man as a child of God. Indeed, so far are some men 
from deserving this description, that the Founder of the 
Christian Faith once said to a group of men whom he 
was addressing that they were rather children of the evil 
one than of God! The men were not vile and coarse, not 
such men as would ordinarily be singled out for illustration 
of great evil in most lands, but men of a wrong and hate- 
ful spirit, farthest from the spirit of love which belongs 
to God. In Christian thought here is a difference between 
ignorance and sin, between mere weakness and sin, be- 
tween defects and sin, between errors and sin, between 
remainders of the process of development and sin. All 
those other facts are negative; sin is positive. It is being 
and doing what one ought not to be and do, and what 
one need not be and do in order to be one’s true seif. 


REGARDING MAN 125 


Many Christian thinkers define sin as self-assertion in 
disregard of God. It is refusing the true relations of one’s 
own personality, neglecting its highest reaches, defaulting 
in its highest obligations, choosing a lower than the best. 
Though the forms of its expression vary widely, such a 
condition proves to be universal, involving the whole 
race and all its members. or that reason, and because 
he is a Father, sin has become the concern of God himself. 
The Christian Faith professes to bring his offer and way 
of escape from the fact of sin. It may be there would 
have been need for religion in a world without sin, but it 
is certain that it is the fact of sin that has determined the 
form of the Christian religion. Its primary offer is to 
men as sinners, and it offers itself to all men because it finds 
men everywhere suffering as its own adherents suffer, 
from the same spiritual disease and weakness. “The form 
of it varies, but the root fact remains the same. It hinders 
the beautiful relation that might exist and ought to exist 
between man and God, and between man and man. It 
spoils the highest efforts of men, and hinders growth; it 
ruins men of every degree. No religion emphasizes more 
earnestly the fact and the peril of sin than does Christi- 
anity. We shall have much to say about it presently, but 
before it is left here, something should still be said about 
the meaning of the word quoted from the Founder of the 
Christian Faith which speaks of some men as being rather 
children of the devil than of God. He does not mean 
that the devil made these men—only God did that; nor 
that the devil cares for these men—only God does that; 
nor that the devil loves them or wishes them well or serves 
their needs—only God does that. All the way through 
it is God who is their Father, yet they are accepting a 
fatherhood from an enemy of God and of themselves. 
An instance from a Western village will make his 
meaning clear. In the village there lived a good father 


126 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


to whom came a son. The father gave him love and care 
and protection and sought to win and hold his love. But 
there was in the village also a foul-minded, evil-willed 
man who drew the attention of the son and commanded 
his approbation and following. Wherever the desires of 
the father and of the evil man came into conflict, the son 
yielded to the worse desires. When the plans and pur- 
poses of the two differed, the son chose the evil course. 
The evil man became his source of inspiration and guid- 
ance. Meanwhile, it was the father who continued to 
provide for him, who loved him, who sought his good— 
not the evil man. But presently the people of the village 
said, ‘“The boy is really in spirit the son of the evil man, 
not of his father.’’ By his own choice he had drawn on 
a different and ignoble source of spiritual life. And this 
is the meaning of the saying of Christ. “The men to 
whom he was talking were governing their lives according 
to desires and principles that were never born in the life — 
of God but came instead from the moral enemy of God 
and men. They were moved by hate and a spirit of oppo- 
sition to truth, and possessed none of the traits of love 
and fairness that keep the heart open to truth. By their 
own choice they had chosen an unworthy idea of God's 
fatherhood for adoption. But meanwhile, God on his part 
was doing for them all that a true Father could do. Sin had 
broken their peaceful relation with God, but it had not 
defeated the love of God. ‘The very presence and message 
of Christ were proof of that continuing love. 


VI 
For this very reason the Christian Faith makes much of 
the unmeasured possibilities of mankind. It is a faith of 
great belief in man, in his inherent powers, in his possi- 
bilities of advancement, in the value of his escape from 
the limiting and hindering fact of sin. (a) Christianity 


REGARDING MAN 20 


utterly denies fatalism. There is a sovereign Power con- 
trolling the world, but that Power is far from a hard and 
fast Fate which cannot be escaped. It is the control of a 
rational being over rational beings, preserving that meas- 
ure of human freedom which is necessary for true human- 
ity. Man is not caught in the grip of merciless forces, in 
the wheels of a mechanism in which he is powerless. He 
is a rational being in a rational universe. He is a moral 
being in the world of a moral God. So he need not re- 
main evil and sinful, he need not be selfish and self-assert- 
ive in disregard of the rights of God and man. There are 
men who consider human nature a fixed and final fact, 
unalterable and changeless. When once they have shown 
that a certain evil has a long standing in history and ap- 
pears wherever man appears, they think the case is closed 
and that there need be no discussion of change. ‘The 
Christian Faith does not admit that any evil in the human 
life or relationship is essential, no matter how long-stand- 
ing it may be. It can point to numberless instances of 
change from evil to good, from selfishness to unselfishness, 
from arrogance to true humility, and what can be done 
in individual cases it declares possible in the large areas of 
humanity. Christianity believes in men everywhere. If 
they are savage, it believes they can be civilized, not 
through long processes of difficult development, but 
through new spiritual forces that can be released through 
the power of Christ. If they are sinful, it believes they can 
be made right, not through mere heroic effort, but through 
the new life that can be received through Christ. If they 
are angry and divided, it believes they can be brought into 
peaceful brotherhood in Christ. The Christian Faith 
despairs of no man nor race of men. 

(b) Another great assurance about men is that they 
may have fellowship with the great God of the universe. 
This is not gained by lowering the idea of God. It is 


128 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


gained, instead, by accenting the spiritual relationship be- 
tween God and man. This is the heart of its joy in the 
incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. The fellowship \ 
which man has with God is not by the upreaching of men, \ 
but by the downward stooping of God. When a man © 
and a child are walking together, the child cannot hope 
to take the long step of the man, but if the man will slow 
down his walk to the step of the child, then they can go 
forward happily. This is what God has done in Christ. 
He has made men realize his love and friendship, his 
readiness to catch their step and walk at their speed until 
they can make his acquaintance. This is not an experience 
which waits for some other existence; it is a human priv- 
ilege and experience here and now. It is what Christians 
mean by loving God, not an ecstatic experience reserved 
for a few gifted souls, but open to ordinary men and 
women in the midst of their grinding toil or in their 
hours of quiet and rest. 

(c) The Christian Faith asserts also the inherent im- 
mortality of men. Its adherents have not always agreed 
about it, but the main current is unmistakable. Man, 
because he is in the image of God, is immortal. Some- 
thing about him dies, of course, but that which is his 
realest, deepest self, does not die. ‘To it death is not an 
end, but an incident in its course. Personality belongs in- 
herently to this immortal element in his make-up, and it 
is never lost once it comes into being. “The Christian Faith 
cannot assert nor agree to the renewed appearance of the 
individual man on earth in different forms. “The human 
self-conscious personality is too rare and vital a reality 
to be abandoned as personal, or to reappear in another 
form totally unconscious or, in rare flashes even dimly 
conscious, of its earlier existence. Personality is self-con- 
scious and persistent. However divided and distracted it 
may become, yet after the storm it abides in full realization 


REGARDING MAN 129 


of itself. That is its normal status, to which it returns 
as a pendulum swings at last to its central point. 

And this applies to every man. Men do not earn im- 
mortality by efforts of their own. It belongs to them by 
inherent worth. The incident which we call death does 
not deal with this deathless reality which we call. person- 
ality. One of the largest joys of the Christian Faith is 
in the resurrection of Christ, his living again after his 
death. An early preacher of the Faith once told a large 
group of hearers that it was not possible that such an one as 
Christ should be held by such a thing as death. Death 
is a merely physical force, so far as its operations can be 
traced. It seemed to him logically impossible for person- 
ality to be overruled by a physical force. “This is one of 
the great reasons for the interest of Christianity in all men 
everywhere. They are not creatures of a day, to disappear 
and cease to be to-morrow. ‘They are beings in the image 
of the infinite and eternal God, with a far-reaching des- 
tiny, whose direction they are determining in this life. 
Each of them is worthy of effort and love, and to each of 
them the Christian Faith offers itself for the short span 
of earthly life and for the long reach of eternity. 


Ava ee 

The Christian religion is clear in its conviction that 
Jesus Christ is the standard man. He is not an abnormal 
man, but a truly normal one. He is, in his place, what 
every man ought to be, in his own place. We have already 
said that it need not surprise us that God has come in 
human form when we believe that man himself is made 
in the image of God. He is not an impossible ideal; in- 
stead, he is a constant challenge to the meekest and proud- 
est of humanity to become like him. It seems far ahead to 
propose human likeness to one who lived: such a life and 
maintained such a character as his but it has been the am- 


130 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


bition of Christian believers from the very beginning. 
Christ called his first disciples to follow him, and they 
understood it to mean very much more than mere physical 
following where he led. They found in him an example 
of life which they could imitate, and a character which 
they could form in their own lives. An early writer in 
the Christian Scripture said that one of the large purposes 
of God in forming the church of Christian believers was 
that thus the body of Christ could be built up, until, as 
he said, disciples of Christ attained unto full grown man- 
hood, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of 
Christ. Something of the hindrance of sin and selfishness 
is always to be overcome in the best of men, but the great 
possibility is held before all men that they may take Christ 
as their standard of life and character and expect in time 
or in eternity to attain to it. This is the crowning con- 
viction of the Christian Faith regarding men: Christ is | 
the standard man. It offers Christ to men to determine 
their way of living, and to establish the measurements of 
character. It takes for its own the words of a Christian 
poet of recent time: 


The world sits at the feet of Christ, 
Unknowing, blind and unconsoled. 
It yet shall touch his garment’s fold, 

And feel the heavenly alchemist 
Transform its very dust to gold. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION REGARDING SALVATION 


We have considered the Christian conviction regarding 
God and man. We are now to consider the third great 
interest of religion: the Christian conviction regarding the 
relation between God and man. What this relation ought 
to be is already clear. Since God is conceived to be a holy, 
loving Father and man is conceived to be a creation and 
child of God, the relation of man to God ought to be that 
of a loyal child to a loving Father. Every thought of 
God ought to bring joy to man, as thought of his father 
brings joy to a faithful son. Man ought to be diligent 
in finding and doing the will of God, placing it first in 
all his programs, measuring all achievement by it. He 
ought to find peace in realizing the existence and nearness 
of God, as any loving son finds peace in the presence of 
his father. He ought to welcome every indication of God’s 
approval and grieve over any indication of God’s disappro- 
bation. This would seem to lie in the very nature of 
the case. 

But whatever may be the logic of the case, the true 
condition is far otherwise. Men do not think of God 
lovingly or joyously or eagerly. They think of him with 
indifference or fear or even animosity, resenting his will 
or disregarding it at their own pleasure. This is not 
the way of loyal sons of a loving Father. And all the 
great religions take this fact as a central one for their 


131 


i THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


systems. They agree on three things: first, that something | | 


is wrong with man; secondly, that it ought to be made \ 
} 


right; thirdly, that it can be made right. It is the first 
item that brings the widest agreement. When Gladstone 
was asked to suggest the greatest fact to which the human 
mind could turn, he named the fact of sin and the way 
of escape from it. A deeply spiritual writer of France 
has said that ‘‘the measure of the profundity of any re- 
ligion is given by its conception of sin and of the cure of 
sin.’ A well known American philosopher finds it a 
sufficient definition of religion to say that it is the effort 
of men to find a way of salvation; its great question is, 
What must I do to be saved? That is what men and 
nations want when they turn to religion. 

But while the great religions agree on the three facts 
suggested, they differ widely as to what is wrong and as 
to how it can be made right. “These two ideas neces- 
sarily go together. Everything turns on what is really 
wrong, for when that is known it is possible to discuss 


the ways of making it right. When a religion offers! 


‘‘salvation’’ to a man, it must be made clear what danger 
threatened or what wrong condition existed. If one be- 
lieves that what is wrong is merely ignorance, then the way 
to save men is to instruct them. If the trouble is weak- 
ness, then all that is needed is more strength. If the evil 
is merely a reminder of earlier and pre-human conditions, 
‘‘remnants of the ape and tiger,’’ then salvation will con- 
sist of patience to wait until further development elim- 
inates these remainders. If the trouble of life is a burden 
acquired in an earlier incarnation, then salvation will lie 
in acquiring an excess of merit during this incarnation. 
If moral evil is merely an illusion, salvation will consist in 
correcting the mental attitude. Students of the subject 
will realize that these suggestions have all been seriously 
made, either singly or in combination. ‘They illustrate 


4 


ee 2 


REGARDING SALVATION 133 


the close connection that must always exist between the 
idea of sin and the idea of salvation. When religions differ 
about the thing that is wrong with man, they will natu- 
rally differ about the correction of it. The fundamental 
difference between religions, therefore, is not in their pro- 
posal of salvation, but in their idea of human need for 
salvation—in their idea of what is wrong with humanity. 


I 


The Christian Faith finds sin as the cause of the wrong 
relation between man and God and finds the root of sin 
in selfishness, a self-assertion of man in disregard of his 
true relationship to God and his fellows. It is the lower 
asserting itself against the higher, the narrower against the 
broader, the coarser against the finer. “That makes it essen- 
tially a break of fellowship, destroying a relationship 
which ought to exist and which would exist but for this 
self-assertion which disregards it. Christianity does not 
find this evil in certain classes of men only, but in all 
men, somewhere and somehow rooted in the human nature 
as it is to-day. 

1. The place of sin in the human order, as it is under- 
stood by the Christian Faith, may be stated in biological 
terms. In speaking of animal or human characteristics, 
one may mean either of three things: (a) there are char- 
acteristics that are purely individual, peculiar to the person 
or the single being: (b) there are characteristics that belong 
to the strain in which the individual appears, his group 
within the whole: (c) there are characteristics which be- 
long to the type in which the individual appears. Dif- 
ferent thinkers have located sin in each of these groups. 
Some think it purely individual and would not agree to 
any logical enlargement of experience which declares that 
it exists in all individuals; they say that this must be 
proved in each separate case. Some think it a matter of 


134 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


racial strain, and see no reason why all racial groups 
should be included without discrimination in the idea 
of sinfulness. The Christian position has been that sin 
is unhappily a type characteristic, appearing in its various 
forms in all men, in essence the same, in manifestation as 
varied as men themselves are varied. Everywhere, in 
varying degrees, the fellowship of men with God is broken, 
fellowship between man and man is disturbed, the inner 
harmony of each man is lost, and, therefore, every where 
the need for salvation appears. Further, since the need 
‘s for correction of the essential root of sin rather than 


for the change of its external manifestations, it is the Chris-— 


tian belief that one corrective for sin is both logical and 
feasible. There need not be many cures, since the disease 
is one and not many. 

2. This fundamental selfishness has done damage at 
three points; within the man himself, in the relation be- 
tween man and man, and in the relation between man and 
God. Salvation must correct the damage throughout. 

(a) The damage of sin within the man consists of the 
disordering of his powers, disturbing his inner harmony 
and so producing unrest. No one fact is more assured 
than the widespread prevalence of this unrest and inner 
disturbance. Ina rational world the nature of man would 
be intended to function harmoniously by reason of a proper 
relation of its powers to each other, the lower yielding to 
the higher and these in turn to the highest. There are no 
inherent illegitimate nor improper desires or motives within 
the human nature. Each is meant to be fulfilled or obeyed 
in its proper relation to other powers. So persistent are 
these powers that they assert themselves in every life, and 
there is no man so evil that he does not at times perform 
deeds of kindliness and helpfulness, deeds which are in 
contrast with the prevailing direction of his life. At these 
times the better and worthier impulses are claiming their 


‘ 
| 
i 
j 


- 


‘ 


‘ 


t 


REGARDING SALVATION 135 


place—only to lose it in the upheaval of the moral order 
which accompanies sin. For disorder comes when a lower 
desire asserts itself in rebellion against a higher and more 
distinctively human impulse, and overrides it. The de- 
throned impulses are never entirely quiescent; they are 
always asserting their prerogatives, no matter how they 
are disregarded. One of the greatest of the English poets 
_ describes the condition of a man who has determined that 
he will no longer give credence to his nobler powers, but 
will deny faith in the unseen and live as though this world 
were his whole concern. But just when he feels safest 
in his decision there comes to him some simple experience, 
like a radiant sunset, or a beautiful flower, or the death of 
a friend, and the rejected elements in his nature rise up 
again and demand attention. No sinner is ever safe from 
the voice of conscience, demanding that the higher powers 
must not be prostituted nor neglected. 

The Christian Scriptures describe the beginning of sin 
in the human order in just this form. Interpreters of the 
account differ as to its historical occurrence, but they agree 
on its psychological and volitional accuracy. The inci- 
dent tells us that the earliest human beings found them- 
selves in the presence of a tree of whose fruit they were 
forbidden to eat, the will of God to that effect having be- 
come perfectly clear to them. But they found the fruit, 
to all seeming, good to eat——a distinct appeal to the 
physical’ motive. It was also beautiful to look unon—an 
appeal to the esthetic motive. It was to be desired to make 
one wise—an appeal to the intellectual motive and to am- 
bition for progress. All these were perfectly proper appeals 
and it is right and necessary that they be recognized and 
obeyed under proper conditions. But neither of them is 
the highest nor most distinctive reason for human conduct. 
Above them stands a motive which represents man’s high- 
est relationship, the point at which he comes into con- 


136 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


tact with the moral universe where God is the supreme 
personality with whom man is to hold fellowship. “That 
motive operated against taking the fruit, as the incident 
is recorded, and it was made unmistakably clear. “The 
beginning of sin was when this highest motive was flouted 
and denied, and lower motives were given the right of 
way. Then there came inevitable disorder in the nature 
of the offenders, the hierarchy of rational motives being 
overturned. And that is the natural history of every sin 
from the beginning until now, and the same outcome is 


Se Ss - 


inevitable. Selfishness conflicts with the balance of power — 


in man. Man is meant to take his proper place with rela- 
tion to others and to God, but he is meant equally to 
maintain the right balance of his powers within himself. 


The flouting of the highest powers is more than a mere 


incident; it becomes a calamity corrected by no easy 
effort, requiring the aid of God who gave the nature its 
order and form. * 

(b) Selfishness works damage in the relation between 
4a man and his fellows. Every evil in the social order 


issues from, selfishness or ignorance, and much of the 


ignorance is the direct outcome of selfishness, so that the 
cure of sin would soon correct social evils of all sorts. 
In human society there is obviously a duty of self-asser- 
tion as there is clearly place for self-regard. When an 
individual man takes his place in the company of his fel- 
lows, in due regard for himself and for them he helps to 
make the harmonious human society in which he and they 
find their true happiness and full development. This is the 
way of peace. But when self-assertion is developed beyond 
the right regard for others, self-assertion in the individual, 
in the group, in the nation, over against other individuals, 


groups or nations, there can be nothing but discord and _ 


unhappiness. Such self-assertion leads inevitably to de- 
preciation of the rights and value of others, and for that 


REGARDING SALVATION 157 


reason to failure in giving one’s life to others and in 
receiving freely from others. Selfishness always results 
in social impoverishment: society loses the ministry which 
the selfish man ought to render to it, and the selfish man 
loses the enrichment which society ought to yield to him. 
It is all loss and no gain, for all its supposed gains could 
be more largely secured by the spirit of service and sacri- 
fice. Sin becomes ruinous in the relation between man 
and man. . 

(c) The same reasoning would show the ruin of selfish- 
ness or sin in the relation of man to God. Here is the 
highest relationship which a moral being can have—to the 
highest moral reality, to God. the source and center of the 
moral universe. Taking one’s proper attitude toward one’s 
true center of being does not mean loss of the self, but 
finding it. The case is shown to be all the worse by the 
Christian: conception of God as a holy, loving Father. 
Refusal to hold a right attitude toward Him will be doubly 
ruinous, because it involves the rejection of the highest 
social and moral impulses. Whether the wrong attitude 
is that of indifference or of hostility, the result is the 
same. A true father would not know what to choose 
between cold indifference and direct opposition on the 
part of his children. “The Christian Faith does not find 
all sin in open offenses willfully committed. It finds sin 
illustrated quite as clearly in days and months of living 
as though there were no God, acting as though the will 
of a Father were a matter of unconcern, using the benefits 
of his care and love thanklessly. So it is an unimportant 
matter whether sin be thought of as a violation of law 
or a violation of love; it is all one. The law is the law 
of a Father, merely his love made available for daily guid- 
. ance. Either term can find a place in Christian thinking, 
for the ultimate relation that should exist between man 
and God is that of a loyal, loving child to a holy, loving 


138 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


Father. Sin, selfishness, self-assertion breaks that relation 
and spoils, the moral unity of the universe at that point. 

The,Christian Faith faces this threefold damage of sin 
with a proposal of salvation which takes account of all 
three ruinous effects, within the man, between the man 
and his fellows, between the man and God. And there- 
fore, for the Christian religion salvation means the restor- 
ing and maintaining of a right fellowship between God 
and man, and between man and man, and of a true hat- 
mony within the nature of the man. This is a gigantic 
proposal, but nothing less can be counted the full work 
of salvation. 

3. The work itself is described under various terms. 


of freedom, the work of Christ is spoken of as redemption, 
which involves setting slaves or prisoners free. Because sin 
separates man from God, making man unfit for the coun- 
sels of God, the work of Christ is sometimes spoken of as 
reconciliation. When thought is turned upon the staining 
of sin, marring the white purity of the human life, the 
work of Christ is called cleansing. When sin is considered 
as offense against a righteous law, deserving punishment, 
the work of Christ is spoken of as forgiveness. Because 
sin destroys the unity or oneness that ought to exist be- 
tween God and man and between man and man and 
within the man himself, requiring for its restora- 
tion a due recognition of the rights of the moral 
order, the work of Christ is described as atonement. 
All these are merely different ways of describing the one 
fact of salvation. | 

4, The Christian Faith lays stress on another important 
consideration—that all sin is offense against God. If a 
man does wrong to himself, it is a sin against God; not 
because he is himself God or to be identified with God in 
any sense, but because God gave him his powers and 


Because sin puts men in bondage, preventing the true life/ 


i 


REGARDING SALVATION 139 


established their order, and he holds them in trust for 
God. If the owner of a watch left it for use:in the 
hands of another man, then an injury to the watch dam- 
ages it, but it wrongs the owner. Every sin against the 
unity or harmony of the nature violates the rights of the 
author of the nature and so becomes a sin against God. 
So with offenses against another man; God gave him his 
rights and set other men into relation to him. Wronging 
him does damage to him but it violates the rights of God 
in his moral order. The strong accent which the Christian 
Faith lays on sin as offense against God does not imply 
disregard of its individual and social aspects. Yet it may 
be a duty at times to violate social or even natural require- 
ments in the interest of obligation to God. It is obviously 
a duty to care for one’s physical life, to preserve it from 
destruction, to maintain it in its fullness; yet higher obli- 
gations may often justify the forfeiting of individual priv- 
ileges. All martyrs are instances of this; the death of the 
Founder of the Christian Faith would be an outstanding 
instance. At one time during his earthly teaching Christ 
called attention to the fact that conditions might arise 
which would demand drastic treatment of powers and 
habits which would otherwise be innocent. His illustra- 
tions were drawn from the physical powers: there might 
come times when the hand or the foot or the eye might 
need to be given up in order to preserve the higher life. 
His implication was that all conduct ought to be regulated 
by the needs of this distinctively human element, even at 
the cost of other and proper elements in the human nature. 
In a sound moral order, higher obligations always super- 
cede or control lower ones. The will of God would out- 
rank any conflicting individual desire. In the same way, 
there may come times when the will of society must be 
disregarded because it is not in harmony with the will of 
Ged. At such times, though he may be punished by 


140 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


society, yet the offender will feel within himself the peace 
of a right relation to God. Whenever a social requirement 
contradicts a plain requirement of the will of God, the 
duty of a moral being is plain. He must obey God rather 
than men. ‘The Christian Faith has been established in 
almost every land by men who faced this duty and did 
it courageously, taking the consequences without com- 
plaint. No man could be counted morally right if he | 
obeyed all natural laws as though they were final, nor if 
he accepted all social requirements as though they were 
final, for neither of them offers the final test to a moral 
being. Only the will of the highest moral reality can be 
final. Everything has to be held subject to that. Sin is 
an offense against the will of God, no matter what other 
will it may obey, and unless the will of God is offended, 
sin is not involved. 


II 


Any plan for setting the relations right between man 
and God must begin either with man or with God, 1. It 
would seem wholly natural that the movement should 
begin with man. He has done the wrong; shall he not 
make it right? The Christian Faith finds all the wrong 
on the man’s side, none on the side of the loving Father. 
The logic of the case seems clear—man should correct the 
wrong which he himself has done. And acting on this 
conviction, earnest men in all parts of the world have 
sought out ways of making atonement for sin and error. 
They have sought atonement by mental, social and 
physical processes. “They have swung head downward 
over flames, they have laid themselves on beds of spikes, 
they have made long pilgrimages through incredible hard- 
ships, they have mutilated their bodies, they have submitted 
themselves to lasting pain—tthat they may find inner peace 
instead of inner unrest, that they may have peace with 


REGARDING SALVATION 141 


God instead of fear of his just wrath. Whole systems of 
reconciliation of the gods have been developed, programs 
of well-doing over against the ill-desert which sincere 
men feel. And for all this every sincere man will have 
nothing but profound respect. There is too little earnest- 
ness in the world in behalf of the deep things of life to 
permit discount or discredit for such efforts after righteous- 
ness and peace. But this is not the Christian way. 

2. The Christian teaching is that the provision for 
making peace in a sinful world starts with God and not 
with man, and is accomplished by God and not by man. 
God is the offended one and man is the offender, yet God 
seeks to recover the fellowship which self-assertion among 
men has broken. And when it is carefully considered, 
this is the only way in which any reconciliation can occur. 
Forgiveness can never be earned; it is always a free gift. 
No matter what an offender can do in any social group, 
his restoration to the group is by the grace of the group, 
not by his own action. Whatever conditions may attach 
to his forgiveness are imposed by those whom he has 
offended. If any offender should make good the offense, 
there would be no room for forgiveness, but offenses can- 
not be made good in their moral quality. It does not atone 
for a theft if a thief restores the stolen goods. It does not 
atone for a lie if the liar acknowledges its falsehood and 
declares the truth again. It does not atone for injustice 
if a later justice is done. All these are roughly accepted 
among men as the nearest an offender can come to doing 
the impossible, but it is clear in the very statement of them 
that the thing that was morally wrong is not changed 
nor obliterated by later actions of the offender. If he is 
forgiven, it must be at the will of the offended ones, and 
they must determine the way in which that forgiveness 
is received. When, therefore, the Christian Faith finds pro- 
Vision for salvation beginning with God, it is merely dis- 


L42 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


covering the natural way by which human forgiveness is 
granted. 

3. The Christian Faith teaches that this salvation was 
the purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ into human 
life and of all that he did while he was in the world. He 
was born for this, he taught his great truths for it, he did 
bis works of wonder and kindliness as part of it, he died 
for it, he came out of the grave for it and his continued 
presence and power in the world to-day are for the same 
work of salvation. Christ did not come to the world to 
indicate any change in God or to produce what did not 
already exist in the heart of God, but to reveal what God 
is and what his desire is for men, and to accomplish on the 
earth the purpose of God which had been in his heart 
from eternity. And all of this is connected with the fact 
of human sin and the need for forgiveness. There might 
have been need for Christ’s coming if there had been 
no sin in the world, as there might have been place for 
religion apart from sin, but it is certain that it is the fact 
of sin and the need for adequate treatment of it that ex- 
plain the form of the Christian Faith to-day and, indeed, 
the form of all the religions of the world. As the Christian 
Book phrases it, in a striking passage, Christ came to take 
away sin. He does reveal the reality of God, and he does 
establish a norm for humanity, but the heart of his service 
to the human race is his bringing of the forgiving love of 
God to sinful men, his provision for restoring and main- 
taining the true fellowship between God and man and 
between man and man, and for restoring harmony within 
the nature of each man. 

4, While all of the life of Christ has part in this 
service, the Christian Faith has from the first laid heaviest 
accent on his death as the point where his work came to 
its climax or focus, the event in which the saving love of 
God crystallizes. This explains the universal Christian 


REGARDING SALVATION 143 


symbol—the cross. No other symbol has ever been so 
satisfactory to Christian belief, though many of them 
exist, each with a rich meaning. Here, in the symbol of 
sacrificial death, the Christian Faith finds the sharpest ex- 
pression of salvation. Christ himself anticipated this, for 
in one of his talks before his death he said that if he 
should be lifted up from the earth, that is, if he should be 
crucified, he would draw all men to himself. Something 
in all men responds to self-forgetting sacrifice. Probably 
the most magnetic element in the Christian appeal is this 
one. In an earlier lecture reference was made to the eminent 
Christian Indian, Dr. K. C. Chatterjee. It is interesting 
to learn that it was this element in the Christian appeal 
that won his allegiance—the sacrificial death of Christ for 
the sake of sinful men. 


Il 


No single explanation of the death of Christ has ever 
exhausted its meaning, though each explanation includes 
a part of the truth. (a) On the physical side, his death 
was like that of any man, caused by pain and internal dis- 
turbance of the proper functioning of the system. A 
physician would say that any man under the same condi- 
tions would have died, and that is true. (b) A jurist 
would point out that Christ’s death came about by reason 
of an unjust and irregular application of a severe code of 
law. A ruler without moral courage to resist injustice, 
weakly yielding to clamor against a victim, would bring 
a man to his death anywhere exactly as Christ was brought 
to his death. And that is true. (c) A student of social 
movements would note that Christ came into conflict with 
the social order of his time at points where that order was 
very strong and where its advocates would least brook dis- 
turbance, and that those advocates put him to death, ac- 
cording to the custom of the time. A rigid social order 


144 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


does not so frequently kill men to-day, but it has other 
ways of getting rid of them, and every man takes his life 
in his hands when he forces an issue with a strongly 
intrenched social order; it will do him to death as it did 
Jesus to death. (d) An ethicist sees in the death of Christ 


an instance of faithfulness to duty, a person bearing his 


witness to truth even at the cost of his life, and he notes 
that such a fate may await any man who is equally loyal. 
This also is true regarding the death of Christ. 

But no one of these explanations, nor all of them to- 
gether, can set the death of Christ out in the light as 
Christian believers see it. There is in his death something 
that brings a sense of the forgiving love of God and of 
release from the disturbance of life and from the deadly 
grip of sin. As one of the earliest Christian writers said, 
“Christ died for our sins,’ not merely because of our sins 
but for their sakes and for the ending of them. What is 
it about the death of Christ which bears so heavily on the 
fact of salvation? Three central truths emerge re- 
garding it. 

1. The death of Christ reveals and expresses the un- 
limited and unreckoning love of God. The Christian 


Scripture makes it plain that it was love that lay at the 


root of the whole fact of Christ. “There is no room in the 
discussion for any word about an angry God who is 
seeking to take vengeance on some one so that he can save 
others. The only anger or wrath that is thinkable in 
connection with it is moral opposition to sin, an opposi- 
tion increased by love of sinners who are being ruined by 
sinfulness. All sincere love may be measured by the oppo- 
sition the lover feels to anything that injures the object 
of his love. Of course, a moral’God must oppose im- 
morality, exactly as every moral man must oppose it. 
But this involves no hatred of men in God any more than 
it does in men. The Christian Faith does not conceive 


Pita ae 


REGARDING SALVATION 145 


of Christ as a third person between God and man, who is 
bearing the sin of men in order to placate God or to win 
his forgiveness. Instead, it conceives Christ as God him- 
self come into human life to bring an unlimited forgiveness 
and an unmeasured love. An early Christian writer ex- 
pressed an accepted idea when he said that no man has 
greater love than to lay down his life for his friends, but he 
added that God’s love is greater than this because he lays 
down his life for his enemies, sinful men. ‘That is the way 
Christian believers have always understood it. The death 
of Christ is not an experience imposed on him by God, 
but an experience in which he was expressing the love of 
God, a love which is sacrificial and knows no limits. “The 
final experience through which human life can pass is 
that of death; if the helping of men demands death, the 
bearing of the final experience, the love of God is adequate 
for it. He also, entering human life, accepts its full de- 
mands. All that any man has to experience he accepts 
as his portion. In so doing he expresses his love. Let 
men slay him if they will, he does not lose his love for 
them. For Christian believers, the cross of Christ is the 
great seal of the unmeasured love of God for men. 

2. The death of Christ shows also the readiness of 
God to take upon Himself the full meaning and conse- 
quence of human sin. It is sometimes urged that no one 
can take the consequence of sin but the sinner himself. 
The fact is, instead, that the sinner always takes the 
smallest part of the consequence of his sin. Immediately 
a sin is committed it passes out of the control of the 
sinner and becomes a working factor in the moral order, 
doing its damage far beyond his reach. “Think of a fa- 
miliar instance: the father of a family committing a wrong 
against his employers, robbing them of their money and 
wasting it in evil ways. He is arrested and declares him- 
self ready to take the consequences. He—take the conse- 


146 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


quences! And what of his wife—shamed and humiliated; 
what of his children—pointed at with pity or contempt 
by playmates and others; what of the firm—crippled and 
limited; what of the church—its name dragged in the 
dust before the whole city; what of the community itself— 
compelled to support one who should be its support; what 
about young men—their ideals of religion as a protection 
against evil shattered? The consequences to the offender 
are serious and lasting, but in the bulk of their damage 
they are less than the consequences which others bear. 
The simple fact is that no man can ever overtake the 
meaning of his own sin; it gets out into the moral order, 
injuring it at countless points. And no one can take on 
himself the consequences of sin except Almighty God, for 
only he maintains the moral order and can meet the dam- 
age which the sin of man will do. Every sin strikes at the 
roots of life and involves an attack on the whole moral sys- 
tem, because if it is followed the moral system is defeated. 
The death of Christ shows God’s readiness to meet sin 
at its worst. 

But why death? The Christian Faith points out that 
this is the ultimate consequence of every sin. An early 
Christian writer phrased it in this way: ‘‘Sin, when it is 
finished, bringeth forth death.’’ Most sins are never fin- 
ished; counteracting influences come into play to thwart 
their ultimate outcome. But death is in every sin, and 
something fine is killed whenever a man sins. Theft 
destroys social stability; impurity kills human relation- 
ships; falsehood murders social confidence; jealousy numbs 
the finest instincts of human appreciation—trace any of- 
fense to its logical outcome and it means death. If Christ 
was to take upon himself the full meaning of sin, then 
he must undergo the experience of death, all that death 
means to men. This is the end of the road which sin 
makes a man travel; Christ traveled the road to its end. 


REGARDING SALVATION 147 


Yet it is here that the resurrection of Christ after his 
death becomes essential. Christ became a Savior because 
he took the full consequence of sin and showed himself to 
be master of it. What ruins men came upon him and it 
did not ruin him; he bore it all and proved conqueror 
over it. [Through death he came into life again—not 
merely as all men survive death and pass on into another 
life, but as an obvious conqueror reasserting his power in 
the midst of the scenes where he had suffered. It does 
not meet the Christian idea to say that the early disciples 
somehow became sure of the continuing life of their 
Master; they had never doubted that, either of him or of 
themselves. It was his return to human life again, trans- 
formed and victorious, passing through what had always 
been defeat and showing himself stronger than death— 
this gave them their assurance under which the Christian 
Faith began its career. “They saw in it their hope for 
ultimate victory over all that sin had meant. 

3. The death of Christ reveals that a forgiving God 
deals with sin as sin deserves to be dealt with. In the 
nobler human moods men do not want to be forgiven 
and restored to fellowship with God or men on cheap 
terms. They do not welcome the disregarding of their 
offenses nor ask to have sin treated as unimportant when 
they know it is important. No true-hearted man wishes 
to be received into the favor of those whom he has 
wronged by any process that leaves his wrong unrecog- 
nized or lightly treated. Nor does he ask to have his own 
limitations taken as the standard for the treatment of his 
evil. He wants the sin dealt with as it deserves to be 
dealt with, not merely as he can deal with it. All any 
honest man can do regarding his sin he wants to do, but 
when he sees that his sin has gone beyond his control and 
is bringing consequences which he cannot overtake, he 
cannot be happy in being taken into favor as though there 


148 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


were nothing to be done but the little he can do. ‘The 
Christian Faith finds in the death of Christ an assurance 
that man can be forgiven on terms of complete self- 
respect. God has not disregarded sin; he has not forgiven 
cheaply. If such treatment of sin had not been required 
by the moral nature of God, it would have been required 
by the moral nature of all true men. A recent writer 
remarks that sound religion shows man that in the end 
he and God stand face to face for eternity and can 
adjust their relations on no basis less than ultimate 
and perfect righteousness. “The largest philosophical prob- 
lem of forgiveness is in the relation between grace and true 
righteousness. It is expressed in a Bible passage to the 
effect that the death of Christ occurred in order that God 
might be just and yet justify sinful men. It is a clue to 
the philosophical problem suggested. Forgiveness can be 
given by grace and yet the forgiving one may be wholly 
righteous, provided the offense is borne by the one who 
forgives. Its consequences are not laid on some one else. 
They are taken by God himself, the only one who can 
take them. When a penitent man knows that his sin 
has been taken with the seriousness that all his moral 
nature demands, he can be restored to fellowship with God 
and the moral order on terms that leave him grateful and 
yet self-respecting. 

Part of this self-respect rests in the assurance that just 
such an experience is suited to the outcome of sin. The 
death of Christ is a revelation to the moral sense of man 
of what sin does. Here was unstained goodness, and sin 
sought to kill it. Here was unwavering love, and sin 
rejected it. Here was unsullied righteousness and sin 
wrecked it. This was the appearance. ‘The resurrection \ 
revealed that sin had been met where it does deepest dam- | 
age and had been overcome. As one of the early writers — 
expressed it, ‘““Death had been swallowed up in victory.”’ 


REGARDING SALVATION 149 


Love can bear up under any such experience and can ac- 
cept the wreck of sin without being wrecked. Sin is dealt 
with as it deserves to be dealt with; it is met on its own 
terms and is overcome. In the presence of such a dem- 
onstration, humanity can come back into right fellowship 
with a forgiving God without humiliation. 

No analysis can exhaust the meaning of the death of 
Christ for the Christian experience, but at least those three 
elements are in it, making it a redeeming reality. 


IV 


When this offer of renewed fellowship with God is 
provided, there remains the acceptance of it by man. This 
acceptance is what the Christian religion describes as faith— 
trusting the love that is offered, accepting the readiness of 
God to take the meaning of the sin upon himself, recog- 
nizing the just treatment of sin, a treatment that might 
have come upon any sinful man so far as he could have 
borne it, but which has been taken upon himself by God 
in Christ. It is in this way that the atonement of Christ 
becomes an actual experience of men. It deepens the sense 
of sin, for it reminds believers that they are not earning 
their peace but are accepting it as a gift from God. Asa 
recent Christian writer has said: ‘‘We are not moral 
heroes with a noble record, who with shining faces go to 
meet our great reward and happy consummation in God. 
Instead, we can only say, God be merciful to us, sinners!”’ 
Forgiveness, under these conditions, becomes a gift, a matter 
of grace or unmerited favor. It cannot be earned; it can 
be only accepted. Sometimes it is said that a religion 
like Christianity is difficult to “‘live up to.’’ But it is 
really far easier to obey than a religion in which the bless- 
ings are to be earned by strenuous efforts. “The only re- 
ligion which can be “‘lived up to”’ is a religion of grace; 
no religion of works could possibly be perfectly followed. 


150 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


If something has to be done in order to gain religious 
peace, then one is put upon anxious conduct to insure the 
right course of deeds; whereas if fellowship with God 1s 
his gracious gift, it can be accepted by the simplest and 
made a present fact in life. 

There follow from the acceptance of this gracious gift 
of forgiveness in Christ the three results that are required 
in salvation. 

1. Of course there comes a new sense of right fellow- 
ship with God. Here is no angry God of whom the sinner 
must stand in fear. Here is a loving God ready to receive 
offenders back into his favor if they will accept his pro- 
vision of forgiveness. He does not set before them any 
scale of punishment or of suffering by which they must 
be measured. He does not require any course of deserving 
deeds which they must perform. All he asks is that they 
accept his costly pardon. It does not provide for any 
waiving of the sinfulness of evil nor for any compromising 
of the holiness of God. Instead, it magnifies both sin and 
holiness. But it is the holy God who in Fatherly love 
assures sinful men of his desire for their fellowship. “The 
mere acceptance of such an offer of forgiveness brings one 
back into right relationship with God. No one would 
accept it unless he wanted the fellowship which it brings 
with it. But merely wanting it, under the gracious offer 
of God, is equivalent to having it. 

2. Naturally, also, with this acceptance there comes 
peace in the life of the man himself. “The original mean- 
ing of sin was the refusal of the true relationship among 
the powers of the soul, whereby the lower desires took 
place above the will of God. Now the will of God is 
restored again to its place; it becomes the first rule of life, 
the highest motive of conduct. In its presence, all the 
other motives of life take their rightful place. And this 
means inner harmony and peace. Here emerges one phase 


REGARDING SALVATION 151 


of the personal meaning of salvation which is of great 
importance in Christian thinking: the fact that salvation 
is conceived under three aspects. It is an event, a process 
and a consummation. It is like all true relationships among 
personal beings: it begins at a certain point, it develops 
from that point, and it reaches a full experience in which 
it gains its full meaning. When Christian writers speak 
of salvation in this personal meaning, it is necessary to 
know which aspect of it is in mind. (a) Sometimes it is 
spoken of as an experience which one may have at a given 
point in time. Many Christian believers know the exact 
time and place where their salvation was accomplished, 
though this is not a necessary part of the experience. Most 
Christian believers cannot tell just when nor where their 
right relation with God was established, though they recog- 
nize the event in which it did occur. They were reared in 
families of adherents and surrounded by the institutions of 
the Christian Faith, so that they take their relation to it as 
a matter of course. So accustomed to it have they become 
that they have not the keen sense of the importance of the 
relationship to God which it involves that might be ex- 
pected. It is like the natural attitude toward the prevalence 
of air around one’s body—nothing is more important to 
life and yet it is so familiar that days are sure to pass in 
any normal life when the very existence of this essential 
element is unrecognized. This may be the final beauty of 
one’s religion, when it is part of the very life one lives, 
but it may also result in the lessening of enthusiasm and 
fervor in its behalf. This insensitiveness does not alter 
the fact that the right relation to God begins at some point, 
recognized or not. It is merely emphasized in the case of 
those Christian believers who can locate the time and place 
of their salvation, and these believers would naturally 
appear in large numbers in lands where the Christian Faith 


eg THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


is not yet woven into the social fabric so that one can 
come easily and quietly into relation to it. 

(b) Christians sometimes speak of being more and more 
saved, or of salvation as being more or less fully accom- 
plished, implying that their salvation at any given moment 
is incomplete. They mean by this that their right rela- 
tionship with God has not yet mastered the whole of their 
lives, though it is mastering life gradually. They are like 
a country that has been in rebellion; there is a time 
when the rightful ruler begins the process of subduing the 
land, winning a group here and another there to his 
allegiance, and going from group to group until all accept 
his rule. From the beginning he is its ruler, but his power 
grows with time. Human nature seldom forms new rela- 
tionships suddenly. Instead, it spreads a new relationship 
over all of its life by slow and gradual processes. Jesus 
used the figure of a bit of yeast placed in dough, which 
gradually spreads by chemical development until it affects 
the entire bowl of dough. That is the way in which the 
new Christian relationship spreads—like a new and per- 
vasive life which, after an illness, little by little makes itself 
felt in all parts of the body, or like a new and revolutionary 
idea which spreads through a community after a long 
stagnation. This fact ought to be kept in mind when 
individual Christians are being judged. It is not wise 
to measure the complete work by any single stage of its 
progress. Some early Christian literature consists of letters 
written to members of churches who were very defective 
in their personal and social lives, yet the leaders welcomed 
them as true Christians in whom the process of salvation 
was only begun. They were spoken of as ‘‘just escaping 
from the old life,’’ emerging from the former condition, 
but not yet fully manifesting the results of their new rela- 
tionship to God. Indeed, by any full understanding of 


REGARDING SALVATION 153 


the ultimate standards of the Christian Faith, none of its 
adherents is a final representative of it. 

This explains the. persistent offer of this Faith to the 
world hand in hand with an open confession of the faults 
and failings of its adherents. In lands where Christian 
believers abound, there are evils which they admit with 
shame, evils in their personal lives, evils in the social order. 
Yet these believers recognize the faults as lying within 
themselves and not in the Faith which they profess. They 
are in the process of salvation. It might even be that an 
individual Christian might not be better in conduct or life 
at a given period than a non-Christian, and yet it might 
be supremely worth while to be a Christian. “TTWo men 
might be in a hospital, one of them more weak and ill 
than the other, yet the weaker may be getting well and the 
other sinking into death. “Two men may stand on a 
mountain side, one above the other, yet the lower may 
be going up the mountain while the other is going down, 
and after a while it will be seen that the lower has the 
advantage of the higher. ‘The real test of life is not where 
one is at a given moment, but in what direction one is 
going. It is the principle of life which Christ gives that 
makes one a Christian, and it may not be manifested so 
fully at all times and places as it deserves to be, but if the 
principle is there it will work itself out in due course. 

(c) The Christian Faith furnishes an ideal toward 
which the developing life is directed, and salvation may be 
thought of as a consummation of the whole course of life. 
Since Christ is the standard man, salvation at its fullest 
means attainment of likeness to him in spirit and char- 
acter. Christian believers have not always agreed as to 
the time when this may be accomplished, Some have as- 
serted it as a present or instantaneous fact. Some have 
claimed it as an achievement of mature life. Most have seen 
it as a consummation to be constantly approached during 


‘ 
“a 
4 


154 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


this life and to be fully achieved in the after-life. But 
there has been no doubt among Christian adherents as to 
its ultimate certainty. 

3. The third result of the atonement of Christ appears 
in the new and right relationship established between man 
and man. ‘This result is to furnish the material for the 
two following lectures, one discussing the relationship 
established among Christian believers, and the other the 
relationship which the Christian Faith would help to 
establish in the world at large, among all men of all races. 
Here it is important only to point out that this social 
aspect of Christian salvation is an essential part of it. The 
commonplace fact that society is made up of individuals 
does not explain fully the relation between the personal 
and social elements in salvation, for it must be added that 
each individual is himself a social product and is as truly 
dependent for his type and character on society as society 
is dependent on him for its very existence. The common 
Christian ideal is ‘“‘a saved man in a saved environment.” 
‘There are certain parts of the right life which cannot be 
expressed without right social conditions, and change of 
unworthy social conditions is inevitable if personal lives 
are altered. In the later hours of his earthly life Christ 
said that he would not pray to have his disciples taken out 
of the world, but only that they be kept from the evil of 
the world. Earlier he had compared his disciples to salt 
and light and the influence they have on their surroundings, 
which implied the close relation he meant his disciples to 
have to the world. It is clear, therefore, that the work 
of salvation will not be complete until the relation between 
man and man is made right. 

Christ’s way of salvation is adapted to accomplish this. 
It furnishes a standard of relationship which is the outcome 
of unselfish love for others. There is in it no room for 
minute discussion of a balance of wrong on one side or 


REGARDING SALVATION 155 


another of a vexed and divisive issue. No such balance 
obstructed the movement of the holy God in providing 
salvation for sinful men. The only possible thought in 
human relationships must be one of sacrifice and service. 
No permanent social order can be formed apart from such 
thinking. And no man who deeply realizes what his right 
relation to God means and how it was accomplished can 
fail to offer himself as an agent in bringing about an 
equally peaceful relation with his fellows. It is far more 
complicated, for no man can control the feelings and 
desires of his fellows. A new social relationship cannot 
be built up from one side alone; if men oppose it, it must 
always be partial. Just as the sacrifice of Christ does not 
force any man into right relation with God, but only 
makes it possible for a man to enter into that relationship 
if he will, so the true and right social order cannot be 
forced on any group. But those who believe in it and 
work for it can see what it would mean to all men if it 
were accepted. It is part of the Christian idea of salvation 
that society shall be saved as well as individuals, and until 
the new order of righteousness is established the saving 
work of Christ will not have received its full application 
and result. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION IN ITS HISTORICAL 
EXPRESSION 


Our discussion has brought us to the fourth great inter- 
est of religion. What is the Christian conviction regarding 
the relation between man and man? ‘The answer must 
fall into two forms: the relation which the Christian \ 
Faith establishes among its own adherents, together with 
the attitude which those adherents are expected to take 
toward other men; and the human relation which this 
Faith proposes and seeks to establish in the world at large. 
The former of these answers is the concern of this lecture; 
the latter will occupy our attention in the closing lecture. 

In the first lecture ofthis series we noted the fact that 
Christianity is a religion with a definite historical origin. 
It sets out from an historical Figure in the midst of a 
story of religious development told in an historical Book. 
From time to time it goes back to these specially sacred 
historical fountains, correcting its current condition by 
them. But it holds another close relation to history in 
that it has been expressed historically under varying condi- 
tions for nineteen hundred years. ‘That is not a long pe- 
riod, as the history of religions goes. Of all the major 
religions of the world, Christianity is next to the youngest, 
only Islam having a shorter historical life. In the presence 
of many of the older faiths of the world, both Chris- 
tianity and Islam seem new and recent. However, two 


156 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION Loy 


milleniums furnish opportunity for some distinctive judg- 
ments upon religious institutions and conditions. Just 
now we are to discuss the expression of the Christian 
Faith in its years of history. 

The story of this expression is not one of unmixed 
glory. No one knows better than Christian adherents 
that there have been bad chapters, during which so much 
else was intermingled with Christianity that it seemed to 
involve a sheer failure of the Faith itself. In such periods 
there seemed little to offer to the world, because so little 
was accomplished among the adherents of the Faith 
themselves. In larger and smaller areas there has 
been need for reformations, and they have occurred 
as they were needed. It must be accented, however, that 
these reformations have come from within the Faith itself. 
It has proved to be a self-correcting religion, a Faith that 
carried regenerative power within itself, never needing cor- 
rection by forces from without. It has been like a man 
whose early training has implanted in him true principles 
of right conduct, so that when he falls into wrong ways 
he has the power to arouse himself and apply his right 
principles without police or judicial corrective, as com- 
pared to a man untrained who must be told from without 
what he should do and how he should do it, and even 
be made to do it. One ground of assurance of the divine 
origin of the Christian Faith is the fact that it has bred 
its own reformers, and they have conceived their task to 
be not the constructing of a new faith, but the recovery 
of the original Faith. Underneath its evils they have 
found running the pure current of its original fountains. 

This need for reformation should not surprise those 
who realize the nature of the Christian religion. Three 
facts go far toward explaining the recurring need. 
1. Christianity is a spiritual rather than a formal faith. 
It has forms and institutions, but they are rather its 


158 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


agencies than its essence. Christ once said that God is 
a Spirit and they who worship him must worship him in 
spirit and in truth. He added that God is always seeking 
such worshipers. Christianity is essentially a fellowship 
of the spirits of men with God and with each other. But 
spiritual forces are always compelled to express themselves 
in more or less definite forms and institutions. When 
they do so there ensues the danger that the form shall 
harden or stiffen until it cramps and limits the spirit itself. 
An idea can become a victim of its own expression. An 
institution can become an end in itself and loom larger 
in the minds of its adherents than the vital reality which 
brought it into being. From time to time this informing 
spirit must break the limitations which are put upon it 
by its own historical expressions and either correct those 
expressions or form new ones. Meanwhile, the process 
of delivery brings great distress and distrust to those who 
have unconsciously identified the expression with the spirit, 
the body with the life. Sometimes, also, it brings wild 
license to those who do not realize how certainly the old 
forms did and do involve the true spirit. But through it 
all there is evidence of the continuing spirit which is assert- 
ing itself. Nowhere does this familiar experience reveal 
itself more clearly than in Christian history. It has been 
necessary from time to time for the Christian spirit to 
assert itself against some of its own adherents and some of 
its own institutions and customs. But the movement has 
been from within. And if the occasion should arise again, 
which will surely occur if the institutions are not per- 
petually guarded against over-accent, we may be confident 
that again the corrective forces will issue from within. 

2. Another fact helps to explain the recurring need 
for this corrective energy: that the Christian Faith coyers 
every phase of life, expressing the whole personality,/ But 
institutions everywhere tend to accent one phase or another 


I'TS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 159 


according to the dominating personality which controls 
them. Moreover, they tend to develop personalities of a 
certain sort, over-watchful of the traits which have become 
important in the institutions and neglectful of other traits 
which are required for the full-rounded man. Against this 
narrowing of accent the Faith is sure to assert itself soon or 
late, either in the interest of the neglected accent or in the 
interest of the whole personality. Every attempt to shut 
the Christian Faith into narrow channels meets failure 
and correction. “These become reformation movements. 
The Faith has beeen compared to a stream making its way 
down the mountain side and across the plain toward the 
sea. It may often be checked in its movement and held 
back by a hindering boulder until it has gathered depth 
and momentum either to sweep the boulder out of the 
way or to flow above it, but if its fountains still flow 
it will find its way over every obstacle and past all the 
devices that would restrict it, until it reaches the sea. The 
figure applies well to the history of a vital Faith such as 
Christianity. It has no unbroken history of triumph, but 
it is never stopped nor wholly checked. Always it is mak- 
ing its way onward in the current of history. Sometimes its 
hindrances are the very institutions in which it has ex- 
pressed itself in the past, sometimes its own adherents 
hinder it, sometimes the obstacle is the world condition 
which it has come to correct. Its believers sadly admit the 
failure they have made in expressing it in their own lives 
and institutions, but they believe that it cannot be wholly 
checked nor finally hindered from its spread over the 
whole earth. 

3. One other explanation of the occasional need for 
corrective periods in the expression of the Christian Faith 
will appear in the closing lecture, namely, that no religion 
which is intended to become a world Faith can expect its 

/full development and permanence until it comes nearer 


160 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


its goal than the Christian Faith has yet attained. In the 
history of the Christian Faith there have been many dis- 
coveries of new depths in the Faith itself. When minds of 
all nations have been turned to the study of the sacred 
Book and of the central Figure of the Christian Faith, 
we may hope that new strength will be given to the Faith. 
It requires the whole world to be a worthy scene for the 
work of such a Figure as Christ. The whole Faith will 
not reach its whole power until it reaches the whole world. 
In the nature of the case, so long as part of the power of 
the Faith is not being exerted, it may be expected that 
errors may creep in which will need correction. 

But after all these things are said, the adherents of 
the Christian Faith think with sorrow of the unworthy 
chapters in its history. They still count it the most glorious 
and worthy history of a religion which they know, but 
they earnestly wish the blots upon it did not exist. The 
fault is with their use of the Faith, their faulty devotion 
to it, their misunderstanding of it, their lack of zeal for 
it. The Faith which they profess is their own severest 
judge, and they are themselves the severest judges of the 
adverse periods of Christian history. “They rejoice to feel 
that they have been freemen in their Faith, never forced 
by it, but rather commanded and won by it. Even their 
failures are a testimonial to the liberty which their Faith 
has given them. 

In the course of its history the Christian Faith has 
expressed itself in three special ways: in an institutio adi 
the Church: in a declaration—the Creed; in a movement— 
the expansion of Christianity both extensively and in- 
tensively. Each expression was inevitable in view of the 
Faith itself. The institution was inevitable as the outcome 
of its principle of love, whereby a brotherhood must be 
formed, and of its need for an agency of ministry to its 
own adherents and to the world about. The expression 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 161 


in a creed was inevitable because of the appeal of the Faith 
to the intellectual life and because of its need of bearing 

witness to the world and of framing a bond of unity 
“among its adherents. The expansion was inevitable be- 
cause Christianity is essentially a life, and life must grow 
or die. These three historical expressions of the Faith 
must now concern us. 


I 


The establishing of a Church was part of the life pur- 
pose of Jesus Christ, the Founder of the Christian Faith. 
There is a dramatic scene in the story of his life when his 
disciples had at last come to see his inherent worth, where- 
upon he exclaimed that now he would be ready to build 
his church. . Almost immediately after his death and 
resurrection, the Church came into existence with a very 
simple organization which grew as occasion arose. As 
churches are mentioned in the early record, they are simply 
different local groups of believers who were drawn to- 
gether by natural bonds of brotherhood and in obedience 
to what they felt to be the will and wish of Christ. A 
Western scholar has defined the Church in its fundamental 
meaning in these terms: ““IThe Church is the company of 
all those in every age who are joined to Christ in faith 
and love, and who labor for the ends which he seeks.”’ 
Such a company could not fail to form into groups, and 
this grouping occurred immediately for the sake of wit- 
nessing to their Master and for mutual helpfulness. At 
the same time all these local groups were evidently con- 
sidered as parts of one total fact, the Church, The insti- 
tution had, therefore, a divine aspect, issuing from the 
purpose of the Founder of the Faith, and a human aspect, 
assuming such forms as conditions helped to determine. 
These forms have become greatly complicated and widely 
divergent to-day. Observers may well ask whether it is 


162 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


proper to speak of ‘“The Church,’’ when there seems no 
such thing but only a series of churches, sometimes ap- 
pearing in unchristian rivalry, sometimes even refusing 
to recognize each other. Earnest Christian adherents offer 
no defense for the division of Christian believers into so 
many and such opposing groups as may be found in many 
sections of the world. There is no comfort for them in 
the fact that this is a phenomenon of all living religions. 
Thus far no religion of the world has remained a vital 
force without divisions among its adherents. Christians 
would rejoice if they were the only offenders at this point, 
but the fact of divisions among religious adherents 1s 
known to all students of religion. Sects and denomina- 
tions are actually less remote from each other in Chris- 
tianity than in some other faiths. Animosities which 
may have marked their earlier history are much alleviated 
now, and without yielding earnestness in conviction there 
are in most places methods of intimate relationship which 
promise that the succeeding generations may know far 
less of strife and far more of fellowship. 

The existence of these divisions among Christian adher- 
ents is the outcome of two counterbalancing forces which 
operate on every Christian believer—the force of inde- 
pendence and the force of brotherhood. ‘They may be 
illustrated in the two forces which operate on the planet 
on which humanity lives—one force drawing the earth 
toward the sun and its heat and gases, the other force 
drawing the earth away from the sun and its warmth 
and control. Either of these forces, operating alone 
or in excess, would mean the ruin of the human race; 
it is only as they operate with a fine balance that the 
earth swings in its orbit and humanity continues 
to exist. (a) There is in the Christian Faith a 
strong accent on the dignity of the individual and 
his direct relation to God. Christianity does not 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 163 


yield well to human dictation nor to arbitrary group « 
mastery. Unless group control clearly recognizes the rights 
of the individual, unless existing authority frankly pro- 
vides for wide divergence of personal views and expres- 
sions, there will be rebellion against them on the ground 
of the right of each man to have unhindered relation to 
God and unhindered opportunity to express that relation 
in ways that he thinks pleasing to God. Whatever is to 
be said against the present unhappy divisions within the 
Church, at least this is true: that they represent the spirit 
of democracy, the right of any man or group of men to 
be true to what he or they may find essential to true wor- 
ship. Liberty is a very precious thing and it is specially 
promised to Christian believers. When they know the 
truth, the truth is meant to make them free. Jesus said 
that he came that his followers might have life and have 
it abundantly. But abundant life is always resisting any- 
thing that cramps and limits it. It is always breaking 
out in new places and demanding new liberty. 

(b) This force of independence could not be safely 
left to itself without the counterbalancing force of brother- 
hood. The effect of over-accent on liberty can be seen 
in the breaking up of the Christian order in ways that 
clearly violate the spirit of brotherhood. This counter- 
balancing force would never prevent differences and 
divergences among Christian adherents, but it would 
always tend to maintain the unity of believers. It is the 
failure of this sense of brotherhood and the exaggeration 
of the sense of individual liberty that explains many of 
the divisions in the Christian Church. Christian be- 
lievers need not agree with each other at all points, but 
they have a religion whose central principle is love, and 
they acknowledge with penitence that their earnest striving 
for what they believe to be the truth of God has been 
often embittered by factional strife. “They have sometimes 


164 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION ’ 


tried to win the battles of love with the weapons of hate; 
they have sometimes tried to heal the rents in the garment 
of Christ by tearing it more widely. But here again their 
own faith is their severest judge. [hey have not been 
true to it in the very effort to be true to it. Other motives 
have entered in which have spoiled the fine spirit of inde- 
pendence which their Faith bred among them. 

Yet, as a matter of fact, this is one of the strongest 
messages of Christianity to the present world: that love 
does not require uniformity, that divergence does not pro- 
hibit love. One of the earliest writers uses a fine figure 
for this in comparing the Church to a human body with 
different organs, unlike each other and yet all related 
to each other, accenting different functions of the one life, 


yet all directed by one head and warmed by the blood | 


from one heart. He carries on the figure by suggesting 
that Christ himself is the Head, under whose direction the 
whole body must function. No one part of it can rightly 
suggest that it is more important than another part. Each 
needs the others. “This is what the Christian Church 
was meant to exemplify before the world and what 
increasingly in these days it is exemplifying. It is what 
the world itself needs. Always there are advocates of one 
phase or the other—some considering that unity is the 
principal thing, some that liberty of divergence is the prin- 
cipal thing. But neither is the principal thing, because 
each is essential. It is like asking whether patriotism or 


world fellowship is the principal thing. We need © 


both—the centering of love on a nation, and the broaden- _ 
ing of it to the world. ‘The Christian Faith proposes | 
the union of the two, liberty and unity, difference and 
love, divergence in opinion and unity in spirit. It is 
not in the Christian program to reduce all churches to 


one form, but only to bring them all into a true unity | 


as The Church. 


a oe 


° ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 165 


There is nothing in the nature or the history of divi- 
sions within the Church which makes this impossible, 
and \with the widening of the life of the Church its ad- 
herents believe it will come. The divisions have come : 
tae through three divergences: in organization} in re- 
ligious practices and in declarations of faith. In each case 
the differences have seemed to involve diverse interpreta- 
tion of the nature of the Church, but they have seldom 
included serious differences as to the nature of Christianity 
itself. And observers should note that with few excep- 
tions there is no inclination to deny the essential Christian 
character of persons in other sections of the Church. It 
may not be good logic to refuse to be in the same church 
with a man whose Christianity you do not doubt, but at 
any rate it is something to acknowledge his Christianity. 
And when the differences are all taken in the right spirit, 
as expressions of a spirit of liberty, there will still be room 
in any such faith as Christianity for such a range as may 
include the simplicity of the Friends or Quakers and the 
ceremonials of the Romanists or the Anglicans, the 
creedal accent of Presbyterians and the non-creedal accent 
of the Congregationalists, the rigid literalism of the Bap- 
tists and the less rigid practices of the Methodists. So 
long as we freely declare that this is the way in which 
the Christian spirit may express itself, we are within the 
bounds of true brotherhood. It is when we say that some 
one way is the only way in which the Christian spirit 
must express itself that we pass those bounds. 

The newer lands of the Christian Faith will teach the 
older ones some vital lessons here, showing the way to 
unity without the complications of historical memories and 
experiences. Certainly nothing could be more tragical 
than for these new lands to adopt the divisions and dif- 
ferences that have grown up in older lands, A Christian 


166 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


leader in a Christian land has expressed the truth well in 
these words: 


Let us suppose for a moment that by some great 
cataclysm all those forms in which the Christian 
religion has been outwardly set forth in the past— 
the spontaneous words and acts of devotion, the 
creeds of the thinkers, the liturgies of public worship, 
the regular customs, the moral codes, the types of 
organization, and the methods of work popularly 
accepted—were suddenly to pass away to-day. What 
then? The Christian religion would be none the 
less with us to-morrow. “There might be some con- 
fusion and perplexity for a time, but that great 
power which we are accustomed to call the Spirit 
of Christ would remain in men’s hearts and would 
soon begin to adjust itself to the new conditions and 
demands that must arise. Christianity is nothing 
if it be not ceaselessly creative of the new. Hence, 
under the circumstances, it would surely begin at 
once to forge for itself new forms for utterance, as 
surely as active children will discover new ways for 
playing with one another if there be no person to 
teach them the old. It would clothe its life in these 
forms and through them it would be effectively 
propagated in the world again. These new forms 
would probably resemble some of those that had 
passed away, but they would be very different because 
the people using them would be very different from 
the Christians of the past in respect both to inward 
life and to outer conditions, 


This describes quite accurately what Christians of Chris- 
tian lands hope may occur in the new lands, as they 
develop a Christian constituency. They want this new 
Christian group to have full benefit of all their history, 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 167 


to use it or to abandon it as the Spirit of Christ within 
them may guide. There seems little use for the newer 
.groups to make the old mistakes or attempt the closed 
passages which look so attractive, and therefore they offer 
their experience for what it may be worth. These nine- 
teen hundred years have not been without the guidance 
of the Spirit of God, and the history is more glorious 
than dark, with far more achievements than failures. Yet 
the adverse experiences need not be repeated, and the 
hearts of multitudes of Christian adherents in older lands 
are with the thoughtful believers of the newer lands when 
they claim the right and duty to frame such church life 
and organization as the Spirit of Christ may dictate, 
unhindered by traditions and demands from their older 
brethren. The Church which should be formed in all 
these lands should be indigenous, self-governing, self- 
supporting and self-propagating. Visitors from other 
lands are to lay no controlling hands on it. They are 
to be its helpers, not its governors. 


IT 


The second historical manifestation of the Christian 
conviction is in its creed, its declaration of belief. The 
creed is a witness to the intellectual aspect of the Faith. 
A Western scholar has recently pointed out that ‘“‘men 
have always intellectualized their religion—inevitably, for 
man is incurably intellectual.’’ He adds that there 
“never is such a thing as a simple faith; it is always 
intellectual, and the simplest faith is that for which 
thought has cleared the issues and got them into order 
and perspective.’’ “he emergence of a creed was an en- 
tirely natural part of the Christian program. It is an 
effort to state the Christian Faith in reasonable terms and 
in logical order. If a faith is to appeal to the intellect of 
man, it must welcome this opportunity. 


168 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


In this case also observers will surely protest that there — 
is no such thing as “a creed,’’ but only a series of creeds, © 
differing greatly, sometimes even denying one another. 
And, indeed, they do differ greatly in length and thorough- . 
ness, some of them stating merely the series of facts which 
marked the birth of the Faith, some of them going 
elaborately into the philosophy of the Faith. Attitudes 
toward them differ greatly also. Some adherents think 
of their creed as being identical with the Christian Faith, 
in one or two instances declaring that one must believe 
this or not be a Christian at all. But all observers will 
agree that this is an unusual attitude and that adherents 
of differing creeds yet recognize the Christian character 
of adherents of other creeds. ‘The differences of the creeds 
are for the most part frankly recognized to lie within the 
circle of Christian agreements. Christians who differ from | 
each other are yet nearer to each other than either group | 
is to irreligious men. The transfer of one’s allegiance 
from one Christian Church or creed to another does not 
mean a transfer of religious allegiance. There is no 
Anglican religion over against a Presbyterian religion, nor 
a Calvinist religion over against a non-Calvinist one. 
They are all aspects of the one Christian religion. When, 
therefore, the Christian Faith is presented to new groups — 
of hearers by different branches of the Christian Church, © 
it is not several faiths that are being presented; it is the 
one Christian Faith in its various modes of expression. — 

1. Most of the creeds of the Christian Faith have grown 
out of conflict within the Church, conflict regarding some 
central issue which had become important because for the 
time it had been questioned or denied. Stagnant bodies 
have no trouble with their creeds. Indifferent men some- 
times think themselves tolerant, whereas they are merely 
careless of other men’s opinions. But when something 
vital is involved there will always be earnest men who 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 169 


will take it seriously. They will be the leaders, and there 
will gather to their standards large bodies of men less in- 
formed, less intelligent, who will magnify the issue beyond 
its true proportions, demanding repression, and the result 
will be new declarations of faith in new creeds or in rigid 
reassertion of older creeds. Then, if the spirit of Chris- 
tian love be restricted or forgotten, the creed becomes a 
club for the beating of others instead of a staff on which 
others may lean in the hard path. It is not the existence 
of differing creeds that troubles the Christian believer; it 
is the failure of the Christian spirit. 

Even at the cost of such failure the Christian Faith 
must continue its appeal to the intellect. An eminent 
British philosopher has said: “I know nothing better 
than to be engaged and immersed in the process of trying 
to know spiritual truths and of acting upon them.’” The 
outcome of this process among Christian believers is the 
declaration of their findings for the sake of other men and 
for their own strengthening. [he Christian Faith offers 
a philosophy of life and a truth which will cover the entire 
range of the spirit; it points out a way of living that is 
good for the young and the old, for men of all types of 
mind. What is more natural than that certain phases 
of it should seem most vital to some, and certain other 
phases to others? But since the Christian Faith is the 
foundation of a new brotherhood, it may be clearly de- 
manded that all creeds should be held subject to that 
spirit of love which helps earnest men to understand each 
other. 

2. It is to be noted that creeds have two main functions, 
each of whichis important. They serve, first, as a declara- 
tion to the world of the Faith to which Christians have 
committed themselves; secondly, as a bond of union among 
believers. In each case a creed may be expected to express 
the fullness of the Faith rather than its more primary 


170 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


aspects. Much as some of us regard some of the creeds, 
we cannot consider any of them perfect for these func- 
tions. It is fair that the world should ask what this 
Christian Faith is to which Christian adherents invite it. 
The tendency of different groups will be to include in 
the statement all that seems to them important. This 
may include what other equally earnest Christian adher- 
ents have not found essential to their Christian lives. If, 
however, it is understood that any large creed of the 
Christian Faith is a description of what the Faith comes | 
to when it is carried out to its logical conclusions or ex- 
pressed in its fullest forms, with abundant provision for 
other conclusions to be reached by accenting other phases 
of it, then the creeds will have large value to any earnest 
seeker after the truth of Christianity. So long as they 
are taken as ultimate, idealized expressions, not proposed 
as requisite for the Christian profession, they serve an 
excellent purpose. It must always be kept in mind, 
however, that the real essence of Christianity is not to be 
determined by its differing creeds, but is to be found rather 
in its accepted Book, and especially in its central Figure.* 
3. Here also is to be said earnestly that with the prog- 
ress of the Christian Faith in new lands and the forming 
of new constituencies there must come new creedal declara- 
tions. [he old human creeds are not to bind the newer 
groups who did not frame them and have not known their 
history in their own lives. To be sure, it cannot be 
unimportant that earlier Christian adherents have found 
these declarations of their belief helpful or even essential, 
and newer believers cannot be indifferent to them. Many 
of them are not the expression of any one race or racial 
group but have met the needs of men of varied types and 
kinds. “They will have rich value for new groups or new 
believers. But as the Church in all its history has claimed 
the liberty of forming new expressions of faith, so the t 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 171 


newer churches must claim their liberty, and they will 
find their claim sustained by their brethren who have 
enjoyed the same liberty in their own lands. The new 
creeds are inevitable as were the old ones. It is still 
requisite for any group of earnest men to announce to the 
world what it is that they hold most precious and what 
it is they offer to the world for its adherence. It is still 
necessary that any group of men formed for the gaining 
of a great purpose should have a bond of union which 
shall give them a sense of unity and cohesion. Such a 
testimony and such a bond may not be explicitly stated 
in terms of a creed, but it will exist implicitly, at least, 
and thoughtful men will find themselves writing it out 
from time to time. “The Christian group are meant to 
be different from men outside it, holding certain great 
realities: which the others do not yet hold, committed to 
certain great programs which are not yet the major interest 
of other men, trusting some great forces whose power the 
world does not yet feel. All this will be worded for 
testimony and for unity at different times. This is the 
essence of a creed. 

The new creeds which will be formed in these days will 
lay less stress on matters which are personal between the 
believer and God, less stress on philosophical aspects of 
the Faith which are vital to only a certain class of adher- 
ents, less stress on inferential matters which may grow 
logically out of the central realities. “They will emphasize 
the central realities themselves and lay added stress on 
the practical duties common to all believers. Creeds cannot 
be made up of mere commonplaces, the things that every- 
body takes for granted. “They are sure to express deep 
convictions which earnest men have reached after struggle 
of spirit. Only such convictions can inspire to permanent 
activity. No man ever goes on doing a difficult thing 
through hardship and danger unless he is driven by some 


172 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


great conviction which is so rooted in his life that it is 
not dislodged by hardship and danger. ‘The progress of 
Christianity has not been brought about merely by genial 
good will and tolerant indifference to opinions. It is the 
result, instead, of the outworking of convictions that were 
the despair of enemies of the Faith. In every creed that 
is worth while there are. possibilities of division and sepa- 
ration. ‘These possibilities need never be realized and the 
creed may be a bond of wide union instead. But the 
possibilities will always remain, and there may appear 
groups of men who will refuse to stand with those who 
hold the creed. “The newer Christian groups have no 
magic whereby they can avoid the same possibility in 
declaring their faith. If they call the rest of their nations 
to accept the Christian Faith, they must make the mean- 
ing of that Faith clear to the nations. If they become a 
mighty working force it must be because they have certain 
deep agreements which hold them together in the midst 
of their differences. And if they find themselves differ- 
ing among themselves, and if they constitute different 
groups within their own numbers, they need not do it 
in anger nor opposition. “They can do it in love, if they 
will, and as proof of that freedom of spirit which their 
faith guarantees. What they ought to learn from other 
experiences is that creeds for exclusion instead of inclusion 
are creeds of sadness and not of joy in the Christian heart. 
And when movements for union of separated groups are 
sought, let them be on the principle of widest inclusion 
rather than of narrowest inclusion. The hope of a true 
creed is to state the truth of Christ so richly and widely 
that as many as possible may assent to it. This will 
not be accomplished by stating as little as possible, but 
by including as much as possible of all those rich ex- 
periences which have made up the lives of believers. The 
creed need not be over long, but it must be rich and com- 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION rye 


prehensive if it is to draw believers together and if it is 
to bear right witness to the world about. 


Ii 


A third historical expression of the Christian conviction 
appears in its movement of expansion, an expansion 
which has been both extensive and intensive. 

1. The Founder of the Faith lived all his active life 
within a very small geographical area in what now 
seems quite an obscure part of the world. In his day 
much of the most influential portion of the world was 
either not known at all or but dimly realized. His 
home was in a province of the Roman Empire, however, 
and the streams of Greek thought and culture flowed 
through it, though there is but little evidence of such 
influence upon him. Here, though he seemed so walled 
about, he was never roofed over. From the first he 
thought in wide terms. Many of his fellow countrymen 
thought of him as a patriotic figure set to restore a 
national independence which they had lost centuries before. 
None of his work was done under any such limited pro- 
gram. ‘here is an account preserved of a serious period 
of temptation through which he passed, in which one 
temptation was to adopt a short method of gaining power 
over all the kingdoms of the world. He refused the 
method but the purpose itself was always in his mind 
and heart. He took to himself a small group of disciples 
whom he could train until they caught his true meaning 
both in his person and in his teaching, breaking down 
their narrow racial prejudices by parables and example 
as well as by direct teaching. He taught them that the 
field of their harvest would be the world with all its com- 
plications and difficulties. Before he withdrew from 
their physical sight. he commanded them to become 
Witnesses to him in the uttermost parts of the earth. 


174 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


All the first group were Jews, but this command in- 
volved the expansion of the Faith to include other races. 
Its first triumph appears in the fact that it was one of 
his most bigoted Jewish followers who actually led the 
way to the reception of non-Jews into the group of 
believers. It required some years for the whole body to 
see the logic of this expansion. However, the outward 
movement began very early in the history and the Faith 
was carried by enthusiastic adherents in all directions from 
the province in which it began. It rapidly surpassed all 
racial limitations, adopting other languages and putting 
its sacred Book into those languages with entire freedom. 
Organized groups of believers soon appeared in all avail- 
able lands, varying widely in many lines but in union 
around the idea of a divine Lord and Redeemer. This 
expansion brought its own problems and difficulties but 
it was in itself exactly according to the commandment of 
the Founder of the Faith. The principal leaders in this 
remarkable expansion are still the heroes of the Christian 
Faith. 

In these earlier days there was no question in any 
Christian mind of the purpose of Christ that his religion 
should become a world-wide fact. After a few centuries, 
however, two influences unhappily checked the full tide 
of aggression. For one thing, the Faith became identified 
with temporal or political power, which has always been 
to its disadvantage. For another thing, it became deeply 
concerned with internal development, especially in the re- 
finement of doctrines. ‘This latter concern is always essen- 
tial, but it is not incompatible with aggressive expansion. 
(a) Identification of the Christian Faith with political 
organization was perfectly natural but was also hazardous | 
and hurtful. It is inevitable that a religion which in- 
tends to cover the whole of the life shall have its influ- 
ence on government. No man can be a Christian in part 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 175 


of his life and a non-Christian in the rest of it. He can- 
not be a Christian when he prays and something else when 
he votes or occupies a political office. Moreover, the ten- 
dency of the Faith to form a compact brotherhood whose 
members are loyal to each other and who think very 
much the same thing soon made the Church a power 
which temporal rulers wanted to use. In so far, there 
was no harm done. But when the Church, a spiritual 
institution, became an ally of the temporal power, either 
seeking to gain its own ends through using that power or 
allowing itself to be used by the temporal power for 
the gaining of its ends, it lost its true freedom. We shall 
see in the closing lecture that a serious problem still 
exists for earnest believers in all lands at this point. Cer- 
tainly in the earliest days, while the alliance of Church 
and State indicated the remarkable progress of the Church, 
it also helped to weaken any spiritual appeal. The Church 
began to think in terms of world conquest by sweeping 
efforts of force rather than the victories of love and per- 
sonal example. Until now Christians had simply lived 
their way into power. Now they thought to fight their 
way to it. Always there were adventurous souls with 
the old enthusiasm for expansion by spiritual appeal, but 
the rank and file of the Church lost the early spirit. 
Remnants of that connection between Church and State 
are still to be found, but it is steadily being relaxed. 
The connection between these two agencies of God’s will 
is not to be organic but spiritual. Each is an aid to the 
other; neither is to control the other. 

(b) Meanwhile, in those early days there arose serious 
difficulties of organization and creed which diverted 
energy from expansion to discussion. ‘There need be no 
conflict between the two interests, but ordinarily it occurs 
in any faith. Periods of creedal debate are seldom periods 
of rapid expansion. A story is told of a small steam- 


176 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


boat which plied on an American river, whose boilers 
had capacity for steam enough either to turn the wheel 
or to blow the whistle, but not enough for both. When- 
ever the steamboat was moving it could not blow its 
whistle: whenever it blew the whistle, the wheel had to 
stop. There are adherents of all religions who have 
mental and spiritual capacity to discuss their faith or to 
live by it, but not enough to do both. When a discus- 
sion starts, activity in behalf of their faith seems to cease; 
so long as they are active in its behalf, they are not con- 
cerned for debatable matters. And, of course, it is not so 
much debated convictions as accepted ones that drive men 
to peril and labor in the spread of their faith. ‘Che truth 
with which the intellect is struggling is generally felt 
feebly by the will. It was so in Christian history. We 
have already noted that the Christian Faith is one of 
liberty and not of force. It does not preclude corruptions 
among its adherents, though it furnishes a constant stan- 
dard of correction in its central and founding Figure. 
Corruptions did appear and their correction cost time and 
thought and energy. Many believers think they would 
have been more readily and soundly corrected if the 
impulse to expansion had remained strong and dominant, 
but it was not the central concern of the Church at 
the period of which we are thinking. 

It would not be fair to the facts to question that the 
course of this expansion in the early centuries was one of 
rich blessing to the people whom it reached. “The Faith 
of Christ brought new conceptions of all vital matters 
to men—new conceptions of God, of man, of human 
relationships, of duty, of society, of destiny. It attacked 
and destroyed evil customs that were hoary with age, and 
it established conditions which elevated childhood and 
womanhood and all racial values. It would be ungracious 
in criticizing the movement for what it did not do to 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION LTA 


overlook the amazing things it did do. The only effec- 
tive standard by which Christian history can be criticized 
for its failures is Christianity itself. The criticism merely 
says that if the history had been truly and fully Chris- 
tian, the case would have been different. “The stream of 
life which the Christian Faith carried in its expansion in 
the early days was one which brought life to desert places 
and hope to depressed lives everywhere. Indeed, some of 
the most beneficent influences of modern life were born 
in the very period when expansion had been greatly re- 
duced in the interest of internal development. They were 
the days of the founding of great universities and of social 
relationships which were the fountain of the democratic 
movement. To use an earlier figure, the stream was gath- 
ering volume for a new overflowing of its banks. 

This overflowing came during the closing period of 
the eighteenth century and has increased to this day. 
What is now known as the missionary enterprise is 
merely the reassertion of the world-wide meaning of the 
Christian Faith. It is the declaration of this present 
generation of Christian adherents that their earliest prede- 
cessors were right in their interpretation of the clear mes- 
sage of the Founder of the Faith. Christ meant his re- 
ligion to become a world-wide fact, and the only people 
who can make it world-wide are those to whom it is 
already a very real personal fact. 

The two hindering conditions just described are not 
much in evidence to-day, though they are not entirely re- 
moved. Doctrinal discussions are still carried on and in 
limited circles they are allowed to hinder the movement 
for expansion, but in the main body of the Christian 
Church they are maintained with mutual understanding 
and love and without checking the effort to expand the 
Christian movement to the whole world. Alliance be- 
tween Church and State does not exist for most of the 


178 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


Church, and it has become clear that a Christian believer 
must be loyal to the government under which he lives. 
In so far as political changes follow the coming of the 
Christian Faith, they are to be changes with which the 
governments from which it comes have nothing to do. 
Every reader of modern history knows how governments 
have sometimes taken advantage of the expansion of 
Christianity to gain their own advantage or have perse- 
cuted a people because their Faith seemed alien. But no 
one can study the Christian Faith without realizing that 
this is not of its genius and without bemoaning the mis- 
use of it in terms of commerce or political advantage. “he 
Christian Faith is not a commercial nor a political agency. 
though it cannot exist anywhere without having its in- 
fluence on both commerce and politics. But when it is 
treated as a means to a political end it is misused and its 
expansion is sure to be checked. 

In the first lecture reference was made to the Christian 
movement which is now under way around the world. It 
was then said that most of the opposition to it arises from 
mistaken judgment regarding its purpose and methods. It 
is proper here that this movement be described in terms 
which are acceptable to those who are carrying it on. The 
Christian movement is merely the voluntary effort of 
Christian believers to make Jesus Christ known every- 
where. It has no connection with governments nor with 
any political program. When its workers are citizens of 
a foreign land they have the same rights and privileges 
as other citizens engaged in other pursuits. The move- 
ment itself is under no support of political powers, and 
many of the citizens of Western lands have no interest 
in it and give it no support. It is entirely a voluntary 
matter, both as to the money that is given and the lives 
that are used. It is less and less a movement carried on 
by people of one nation for people of another nation and 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 179 


more and more a movement carried on by the citizens of 
each land for their own land. Four elements in the Chris- 
tian movement deserve thoughtful consideration. 

(a) It is an effort on the part of Christian be-2 
lievers to fulfill the purpose of the Founder of the Faith. 
There can be no doubt that Jesus Christ desired that his 
truth should become universal and that he left it as a 
sacred trust to his followers to see that it became so. What 
he had to give to men, of salvation and hope and peace, 
he meant for all men. If any men needed his cleansing 
from sin, all men need it; if any men needed the new 
outlook on life which he gives, all men need it. And he 
meant it for everybody. (b) The Christian movement is 
an effort of Christian believers to share with others the 
best of their own knowledge and experience. For all 
Christian believers of to-day the Christian religion is a 
received faith and not an original one. It came to them 
from others; it seems only fair that it shall pass on from 
them to others. Christianity is not the indigenous faith 
of Western nations; it is an acquired faith, coming to 
them by the effort and sacrifice of men who bore it to 
them. It is painfully easy to share with others the worst 
things in a nation—its hard industrial conditions, its dis- 
sipations, its temptations to evil, its social inequalities. 
Surely it is only fair that the best shall also be shared. 
In the minds of Christian believers their religion is the 
best thing they have or know. It has brought them a rela- 
tion to God and other men, and it has a value in their 
own lives which they know will be helpful also to 
others. No one requires them to extend their faith on 
any other grounds but their own appreciation of its value. 
(c) The Christian movement is an effort on the part of 
Christian believers to express the nature of the Christian 
Faith. It is not a Western religion, nor an Eastern one, 
but a human religion because it contains God’s message 


180 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


to men as men. If Christianity claims to be a world 
religion, it cannot hope to come to its full expression 
except in the entire circle of humanity. The central prin- 
ciple of the religion is love, and true love does not stop 
until the circumference of its power is reached. The love 
which Christ demands of his followers leaves out no mem- 
ber of the human race. If the religion of Christ is to be 
expressed in its true nature, nothing less than a world 
movement is possible. (d) The Christian movement is 
an effort to help in unifying the world. Many causes of 
disunity have issued from Christian lands, ambition, 
pride, greed, selfishness. But the genius of the Christian 
Faith calls for unity. There is but one God, one human 
race, one Savior from sin in whom God has been incarnate 
—there is nothing fundamental which does not suggest 
unity. Something must make the world friendly instead 
of antagonistic. Christian adherents consider the spirit 
and purpose of Jesus Christ exactly suited to accomplish- 
ing so great a result. This is the dominating motive with | 
many of its strongest advocates. 

Such a movement has to be carried on in the world 
as it is, with many complications, many varieties of 
agents, many possibilities of misunderstanding. It is liable 
at all times to the old hindrances, but increasingly it is 
freed from them. Under these better conceptions and with 
this larger freedom, the modern expansion of the Chris- 
tian Faith has been far more rapid and thorough than 
the earlier one. It began its new career in India in 1793, 
in China in 1807, in Japan in 1859, and to-day there 
are only very small portions of the earth where it has 
not begun to be known. In the past century the knowl- 
edge of Christ has reached more people than in any other 
century of its history. Its sacred Book has been cast into 
more tongues of men than in any other similar period; 
it has to-day a larger staff of eager men and women en- 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 181 


gaged in the work of its expansion than ever before: 
it has more established institutions of expansion than in 
any era of its life, and the purpose to offer it to all men is 
more pervasive than ever before in the Christian Church. 
By this time, happily, it is clearly understood that the 
only methods for its expansion are spiritual ones. The 
use of force or of other inducements than those suited to 
religion would be resented as quickly by Christian be- 
lievers as by adherents of the displaced faith. In the new 
era of expansion in which we live, the Christian Faith 
offers itself to the world peacefully and intelligently. Its 
adherents believe that it has what the world needs. Only 
so do they offer it to the world. 

2. Thus far we have considered the extensive expan- 
sion of the Christian Faith. In our own day there has 
occurred an intensive expansion which bids fair to make 
a new era in the history of the religion. It is the re- 
newed discovery of the universal application of the Faith 
to all the concerns of life. This will be the chief con- 
' cern of the closing lecture. In the earliest period, when 
the extensive or geographical expansion was progressing 
so tapidly, it seems to have swallowed up the energy of 
believers, but as soon as power developed it began to 
be used for the correction of evils in all phases of human 
life. This zeal waned, however, along with the zeal for 
expansion, and evils were allowed to exist in society and 
human relationships which were utterly incompatible with 
any clear understanding of the Christian Faith. At first 
the little company of believers were helpless against the 
government and the social system. “There was good ex- 
cuse then for treating their Faith as a means for rescue 
of troubled individuals from conditions which could not 
be corrected. Christian thinkers now see that the power 
to correct evils constitutes a duty to correct them. A help- 
less group might not find a way to overcome wrongs and 


182 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


to set men free from social evils and injustice, but Chris- 
tians are not such a group in these days. They have be- 
come a strong, forceful body of men and women, with 
immense social power. There is no evil of which they 
have reason to stand in awe. They endured slavery, some 
even finding it entrenched in the natural order of things, 
some finding support for it in the teaching of the sacred 
Book, but little by little it was seen to be utterly incom- 
patible with the spirit of Christ, and to-day it cannot 
live with any intelligent understanding of that spirit. 
Gambling is a similar vice which must as surely be ban- 
ished. War must go the same course soon or late. Traffic 
in strong drink is now going toward its ruin. The re- 
ligion of Christ is becoming clearly a religion for all men 
and for the whole life of each man. As it develops 
strength in its own believers it makes them burden bearers 
for weaker peoples everywhere. 

This intensive expansion makes its extensive expansion 
immensely more difficult, but also immensely more worth 
while. The leaders in its geographical expansion will 
come first of all from the places where it now exists, 
though their work will be taken over more and more by 
the men who are won to Christ in each land. It is not 
in the thought of the churches in Christian lands that their 
workers will carry the word of the Christian Faith 
throughout all lands. This is the work of the men who 
know those lands best. The work of Christian believers 
from outside of any land is simply to start a movement 
which ldter they may help to the fullest of their ability 
but which will become as speedily as possible the move- 
ment of the believers of each land. What are often called 
““foreign’’ missionaries are to be replaced in leadership by 
those who are not “‘foreign’’ to the land in which the 
Christian movement for expansion is under way. The 
“‘foreign’’ group may remain as helpers and supporters, but 


ITS HISTORICAL EXPRESSION 183 


the weight of the movement must always fall on citizens 
of each land before it becomes mighty. 

In the same way this social or intensive expansion 
of the Faith, its application to the whole of the life of the 
community will be the task of those believers who have 
found the help of the Faith in their own lives. They will 
know what customs need to be changed—they and not 
strangers from other lands. They will know how those 
changes should be brought about—they and not men 
unaccustomed to the land. 

But nothing now can hinder the expansion of the 
Christian Faith, nothing but failure of Christian adher- 
ents themselves in more and less Christian lands. In all 
these lands the Church has had its beginning. In them 
all the great declarations of faith have been made or can 
easily be made. In them all the Faith is ready to spread 
to the last man and to the last need of each man. Every 
land needs what Jesus Christ has to offer of salvation and 
hope and new life. He offers it through those who have 
already received it. Some of them have failed him in the — 
past, but always some have proved trustworthy. Their 
number was never so great as to-day. 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION AND THE WORLD 


We have thus far considered three of the great interests 
of religion, discussing the teaching of the Christian Faith 
regarding God, regarding man and regarding the relation 
between man and God, especially as this relation involves 
the fact of sin and the method of salvation. In the pre- 
ceding lecture we began the consideration of the Christian 
conviction regarding the fourth point of religious con- 
cern, the relation between man and man. At the time 
we observed the provision for a close relation among be- 
lievers in the brotherhood of the Christian Church. The 
present lecture is concerned with the relation which the 
Christian Faith seeks to establish among men everywhere. 


I 


No thoughtful man can observe the world as it actually 
exists without profound dissatisfaction. ‘The evils of the 
social order are so prevalent that they arrest attention 
everywhere. It is not suggested that all is evil. ‘There 
are in all social orders many good traits, as there are every- 
where excellent human characteristics. Many relationships 
are beautiful and are worthy of humanity. Nothing is 
gained and much is lost in the habit of denouncing 
humanity and social conditions in a wholesale way. The 
Christian Faith does not sustain a pessimistic view of 
the world. Indeed, it is these desirable things that set 


184 


be 


AND THE WORLD 185 


the evils of the world in sharp and painful outline against 
the sky. And the dissatisfaction of Christian believers is 
deepened by three elements in their religion. 

(a) The world in which these evils exist is God's 
world. Its forces are benevolent. It is meant to be the 
home of a human brotherhood for which it is well 
adapted. One of the marked traits of Christ was his joy 
in the natural world. He loved flowers and grain and 
birds and harvests, sunshine and rain. He loved people 
more and was with them almost constantly. He taught 
them that God is a loving Father who cares for men 
more devotedly than He cares for the natural order. That 
such a scene should be turned into a field of conflict among 
men, that one group should exploit another in such a 
world, that part of the human race should be miserable 
or depressed or abused—such conditions ‘are intolerable. 
If this were the devil’s world, or if its mastery were prob- 
lematical, there might be some excuse for the inhumanity 
of man to man and for the failure of social relationships. 
But the human race is set in the midst of a world which 
God made and maintains and which he is guiding toward 
some worthy end. The Christian Faith makes social and 
other evils all the more impossible. 

(b) Christian believers are not allowed to withdraw 
from the world and its activities. They are adjured by 
their Master to be salt and light in their surroundings. 
This involves their close relationship with society at any 
point of its need. There is no room for contempt for 
society nor for abandonment of the social order. Instead, 
it is clear that no man can absolve himself from his meas- 
ure of responsibility for the evils in any social order of 
which he is part. Every man shares in the results of social 
evils in his own life, no matter how eager he is to exempt 
himself from them. He cannot be entirely free from 
the oppressive industrial or economic system of his land, 


186 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


from the preparation for wars and from their support, 
from the results of class or caste distinctions. Every life 
is so interwoven with the social fabric that all that per- 
tains to that fabric influences the life. No man could, if 
he would, withdraw from the world so effectively that he 
can exonerate himself from its evils. And the Christian 
Faith makes it imperative on its believers not to withdraw 
from the world but to pour into it the best life they have. 
If it is true that they have what the world has not, it is 
meant that the world receive it from them. 

(c) The dissatisfaction of Christian believers with 
the present social order at many points is deepened by 
their realization that all of the evils are both avoidable 
and correctible. All these evils arise from sin or ignorance, 
and the Christian religion exists in the world because they 
are here. “They have no necessary place in the human or- 
der, they serve no good ends, their destruction would be for 
the good of humanity everywhere. The Christian Faith 
cannot take such evils for granted when it carries within 
itself the corrective answer for any of them. In so far 
as evils issue from ignorance, there need be no discussion 
regarding their correction; surely ignorance is unnecessary 
in the world. And in so far as the evils issue from sin, 
the Christian Faith cannot admit their necessity, for its 
distinct mission in the world is the cure of sin. 

Christian believers realize that there has been too little 
serious effort to deal with social and political evils in 
terms of religion. Sometimes, indeed, the evils have been 
entrenched in religious practices or have received religious 
sanctions. In some parts of the world social evils have 
been accepted as inevitable or as an unavoidable phase of 
human development. Whole groups of men have taken 
their own degradation or that of others for granted. It 
has not been long since many Christian believers doubted 
the aplication of their religion to economic, social or 


AND THE WORLD 187 


international questions. They thought of religion as a 
purely personal thing. Gradually the realization has grown 
that if a religion does not cover the whole of life and all 
of its interests, then it cannot serve any part of the life 
effectively. Life is one, and efforts to live it in compart- 
ments are always doomed to failure. Recent decades have 
seen a wide expansion of the application of the Christian 
religion to life. “To-day, in the intelligent circles of the 
Faith, there is no interest of life which is not counted 
the concern of Christian believers. 

It is said that social evils are rooted in human nature 
and that human nature cannot be changed; Christian 
believers reply that no evils are necessary to right human 
nature and that the nature can be changed in any way 
that is requisite to make it true to itself. Countless in- 
stances of such change are available to all observers. Every 
evil in the social order has already been eradicated from 
the wills of multitudes of human beings by the power of 
Christ in their lives. Mean men have become generous, 
selfish men have been made socially helpful, untrue men 
have been made reliable, narrow-minded men have been 
broadened. What has been done can be done again. 
Christ came to do just this thing—to change men until a 
new order should appear under his power working through 
them. He has already made all the changes needed in 
many men; he can make them in more men. On this 
account his followers cannot accept the evils of the social 
order placidly. 


II 


The evils of the present social order have been much 
discussed in recent years, and we need not here go into 
careful details about them. Acknowledging other evils, 
most of us would agree that five are outstanding. Each 
is wholly incompatible with what have been pointed out 


188 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


already as the convictions of the Christian Faith. Each 
prevents the presence of Christ’s Kingdom of God on earth. 
These five are: inter-racial animosities, international an- 
tagonisms, inter-group jealousies and injustices, war and 
human depressions such as poverty and degradation. 
Each of these has been greatly enhanced by the later con- 
dition of the world whereby groups and races and nations 
have been brought into far closer relations than hereto- 
fore. It is no problem to get along with one’s neighbor 
if one never meets or sees him. It is always easy to avoid 
war if we avoid all contacts. If the scale of living is low 
for all of us then there are no depressed classes of which 
we can become conscious or for which we can become con- 
cerned. Until there grows in the spirits of men a sense 
of personal worth and a desire to benefit their own kind, 
there will be no rebellion against the control of one in- 
dustrial group by another. Each of these social evils, 
with all of their attendant and collateral evils, is an out- 
growth of the new conditions of the world to which 
humanity has hardly yet become accustomed. They have 
all been sharpened in intensity by the recent experiences 
through which the world has been passing. Moreover, 
these five major evils are peculiar to no single country. 
They affect the social order everywhere. 

1. No single problem is receiving more persistent and 
earnest attention in Christian lands at this moment than 
that of racial relationships. It is no simple problem, and 
all simple solutions of it are condemned at once by their 
simplicity. Historical prejudices, physical antagonisms, 
confirmed habits of life, all help to make it difficult to 
find the way in which widely differing portions of the 
human race can assert their independence and their unity 
at the same time. Color lines are the most easily recog- 
nizable lines, but racial differences are not confined to color 
distinctions. Outbreaks from time to time, exaggerated 


AND THE WORLD 189 


in their excitement and even more extreme in their reports, 
increase the difficulty of right relationship. For all this 
Christian believers have no defense, though they some- 
times differ as to the wisest way of handling the situation. 
Against it every substantial principle of the Christian 
Faith is in irreconcilable conflict. God has made of one 
blood all races of men. The human races are one human 
race, all made in the image of the one God, all under 
obligation to find and execute the will of that one God. 
There are differences between racial groups, and it is the 
duty of every group to come to its best development for 
the contribution it can make to the whole race. But per- 
manent and necessary antagonisms between them are out 
of the question. There must be somewhere a cure for 
such an evil. For the Christian Faith the cure lies in 
the application of the principle of love by which Christ 
meant to make a brotherhood of the scattered races of 
men. Christians accept the condemnation pronounced 
upon them by observers for their failure here, but they 
remind their critics that in this condemnation they are 
being judged by the standards of their own religion. It 
is because they have not been true to their own Chris- 
tian Faith that they have failed. They have a growing 
sense of that failure and an increasing resolve to correct 
it. It is their Faith and not themselves which Christian 
adherents offer to the world. But the Christian principle 
of love utterly forbids that any group shall hold another 
in contempt or shall rise by the suppression of another. 
The children of one Father must learn to be brotherly 
among themselves. Christ has not made us masters and 
servants but brothers under one Father. We have a long 
and perhaps a hard road to travel before we realize this 
plain Christian principle in conduct, but we have the joy 
of realizing that we are on the right road toward a true 
goal of human relationships. 


190 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


2. Other elements enter into the discussion when we 
consider international antagonisms. It is natural that in 
recent centuries the most nearly Christian nations have 
been the most aggressive ones in all international relation- 
ships. “They have sometimes wrought injustice and dam- 
age, but the influences which issue from the Christian 
lands have not been chiefly or predominantly evil. Chiefly 
they have been for good in other nations. Their educa- 
tion, their social ministries, their industrial opportunities, 
their economic developments, have brought rich good. 
There is always danger of singling out the adverse ele- 
ments in any relationship and magnifying them until they 
seem the only elements. 

All nations are now the victims of history and of ideals 
which have not yet been corrected by the wider vision of 
thoughtful minds. Heretofore most nations have thought 
solely of their own people and their advantage. They have 
been on the defensive for their own interests. Christian 
nations have shared this spirit in large part because they 
have failed to apply the Christian principles of love and 
sacrifice to any relations above the individual life. The 
result has been already suggested, namely, three types of 
patriotism have developed. First, there has been a patriot- 
ism of self-defense, each nation seeking to grow strong 
for the sake of protecting itself from other nations. 
National leaders have urged armaments and military 
equipment in order that the nation might continue in 
the midst of aggressive nations which would covet its 
lands and resources. Secondly, there has been patriotism 
for self-expression. National leaders have urged the 
right of each nation to be itself and to be left alone by 
other nations so that it may express its inner spirit in its 
own way. This has led to rejection of the industries and 
social customs of other nations and to a spirit of animosity 
which would gladly drive all other peoples out of the 


AND THE WORLD 191 


nation’s borders. The Christian people of America a 
few years ago were compelled to meet and oppose a strong 
propaganda of this sort under the familiar heading of 
“America for the Americans.’’ Every nation knows this 
spirit. Thirdly, there has been patriotism for aggression. 
An inflated sense of national importance leads patriots to 
lay plans for the conquest of other nations and the acquir- 
ing of their territory and resources. It was fear of this 
type of patriotism that led to the latest war. The feeling 
of Germany that it was being crowded into the shade 
and must somehow procure a place in the sun had de- 
veloped in many German minds a set purpose to occupy 
a major place in the sun. 

All these types of patriotism are perfectly familiar to 
students of history. In the beginning of each of them 
there was real merit, and the patriotic spirit developed in 
each case doubtless is open to praise. “The new spirit 
will not belie the value of either of these types. For the 
fourth type of patriotism will be for service, and this will 
be according to the Christian principle. It will not be a 
wholly new thing. Many nations have hints of it in the 
midst of their patriotism of other types. When we put 
internationalism above mere patriotism it is this which 
we are trying to say. We do not minimize the value and 
beauty of patriotism. That has been bought at too 
dear a price to be lightly set aside. We merely seek to 
redirect it into wider and nobler channels.- We would 
have each nation grow strong within itself, we would have 
its security guaranteed, we would have its peculiar spirit 
maintained without destructive influences from other lands, 
but all because the world as a whole will be best served 
thereby. As Christians we believe that the race is one 
and that God means each part of it to contribute its 
share of good to the whole. This cannot be done by the 
subjugation of one nation by any other. There may 


192 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


have been a time in history when such subjugation had 
its value and was an advance over receding conditions, but 
that time is certainly past. 

Thoughtful men know that some nations are superior to 
others in present ability and equipment for national life. 
Such superiority constitutes a real opportunity which may 
take either of two forms. It may become an opportunity 
for self-aggrandizement by the exploitation of less favored 
nations; this has been the result in many instances. Cyni- 
cal men insist that it is the only opportunity which nations 
can ever be expected to see, since group mankind is sure to 
be selfish. To this Christians can never agree, for them- 
selves or for others. They see the other and richer oppor- 
tunity which superiority provides: that of service and 
helpfulness. An early Christian writer phrased it in this 
way: ‘Now we that are strong ought to bear the infirmj- 
ties of the weak and not to please ourselves.”’ Any strong 
nation may use its energies for its own advantage, but it 
has a mighty opportunity to use its energies for the up- 
holding and steadying of weaker nations. There are 
many who count this a mere chimera, a dream of idealists 
which can never be converted into reality. But the prin- 
ciple involved is in constant operation in personal life 
and even in communal life. Once it was counted a mere 
dream there also, and there are still men who assert the 
fundamental selfishness of humanity and insist on finding 
something selfish in what we call unselfishness. It must 
be said, then, that the appearance of unselfishness, if 
that were all of it, has been to the immense advantage of 
men. But the appearance can never take the place of the 
reality of unselfishness. The matter is easily tested. - 
When an apparently unselfish deed is performed, all men 
praise it so long as they believe it was really unselfish. 
But if they should learn that it was only apparently so, 
that the doer had in his mind all the time his own ad- 


AND THE WORLD (Wt 


vantage, best gained by seeming to think of others, they 
would no longer praise it. They would consider them- 
selves deceived and wronged. Whenever a nation does 
what looks to be an unselfish act, it is always applauded 
by any who believe in unselfishness, and is always 
suspected by those who do not believe in such impulses 
in national life. But if it should develop that the act 
was not unselfish but was wholly for national advantage, 
the nation would at once lose the high honor it had 
gained. ‘There is no adequate reason why nations may 
not be expected to follow the same principle of unselfish- 
ness which is proposed by the Christian Faith to the 
individual. Certainly its application makes for true 
happiness in personal life. Christians believe it will make 
for true happiness in international life. 

The application of the principle of unselfishness among 
nations will always be more difficult than among indi- 
viduals. The duties of trusteeship enter into national 
relationships as they may not do among individuals, but 
the joy that all men find in the beginnings of this new 
patriotism is only an earnest of the deeper happiness that 
awaits the world when it comes into full operation. 
Meanwhile, there is need for patience as the older 
patriotism continues to assert itself and as nations seek 
to preserve what was good in its earliest types. It will 
be necessary to protect nations and racial groups against 
each other, and this may be clumsily done. Even in 
loving families it is sometimes necessary to prevent small 
hands from seizing upon the possessions of other members 
of the household, and sometimes this is badly done so 
that the small hands are hurt and feelings are outraged, 
but later years may bring cure to the injured feelings and 
perhaps teach older members of the family to do similar 
things in a better way. The next few decades will 
demand all the human patience of which men are capable 


194 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


in the new adjustments that must be made in international 
relationships. This has become suddenly a new world, 
a world of close relationships, a world of mutual obliga- 
tions, a world of limited rights. The nations are like 
children in their first confinement in a school with other 
scholars after a wild free life in which there was no one 
to limit their independence. Such children are sure to 
do violent things which carry over their old selfishness 
into the new social conditions. They are better reasoned 
with than resented. In this new world nations must 
learn to sit down together and have things out. In 
opening an important international conference, a British 
statesman said, “I hope this conference will be a great 
example of how men of good will even if divided slightly 
by interests can, by putting their good will first, prove 
to the world and their own countries that they can be good 
friends of peace without sacrificing any of the vital interests 
of the nations to which they long.’’ The Christian 
Faith carries a strong assurance that such a way can be 
found. Nations can live in righteous peace and brotherly 
love. 

3. In the matter of inter-group jealousies and injus- 
tices, the Christian principle is equally clear. As human 
society now exists, social groups have their natural place 
and function. There have been many schemes for their 
elimination, but thus far none has been found practicable. 
Experiments have resulted in the mere alteration of re- 
lationship between existing groups or the establishing of 
a new series of groups. The mind naturally turns to the 
great Russian experiment. Those who have not been 
in Russia are confused by the conflicting reports of equally 
honest men. But one fact is quite plain: that one 
governing group has been displaced by another governing 
group. ‘The new one may be better, larger, more logical, 
than the previous one, but it is nothing but a group after 


> 


AND THE WORLD Lo 


all, and it is just as irresponsible except to its own members 
as was the previous one. No experiment has been able 
to dispense with social groups. It is not yet proved that 
such groups need to disappear. Just as there is nothing 
inherently inhuman or wrong in the existence of nations 
and racial groups, so hh seems nothing inherently 
objectionable in the existerice of groups of laborers and 
employers or directors of labor, of teachers and students, 
of mental workers and hand workers, and similar working 
distinctions. And there is apt to grow up in all such cases 
a certain group consciousness which tends to integrate the 
group within itself. In the past this group consciousness 
has needed to be largely on the defensive. Weaker and 
less crystallized groups have suffered constant injustice at 
the hands of stronger and more self-conscious groups. 
The history of laboring groups in all lands has been shot 
through with injustice and disregard of employing groups. 
It is supposed by some that this antagonism is inevitable. 
A well-known labor leader in America has declared that 
of course laborers and employers will always oppose each 
other, because each group naturally wants all the advantage 
for itself. Well, let it be said that such an idea is 
thoroughly and radically unchristian and that the Chris- 
tian Faith would fail in the world if it were true. And 
it is not true. It is possible for any individual to think 
in terms of his group, as multitudes of labor leaders and 
employers do in behalf of their own groups. If that is 
possible with regard to a smaller group it is possible with 
regard to the social group of which these smaller ones are 
only parts. Any sincere labor leader will insist for 
himself that he is forgetting his own personal interests 
when they conflict with the group interests which have 
been committed to him. He finds his own interests best 
served when he serves the interests of the whole. And 
that is the Christian principle. But if it applies in his 


196 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


own case, there is no reason why it should not apply in the 
case of his group and its relation to the interests of the 
whole of which it is only a part. It is when individuals 
think of themselves as wholes and not as parts that 
mischief is wrought in society. It is when groups think 
of themselves as wholes instead of parts that still wider 
mischief is wrought. The Christian principle requires us 
to think of wholes, finding ourselves and our groups part 
of a total brotherhood in which the interests of all are the 
concern of each, and the concern of each is the interest 
of all. Cynical men count this a counsel of perfection, 
but it is a commonplace of personal life and it is the 
Christian principle for the world and all its groups. 

4. The growing opposition to war is nowhere more 
marked than in Christian lands. In some non-Christian 
lands the Christian Faith is thought of as inseparably 
connected with blood-shedding and warfare. This is 
frankly accepted as the failure in large part of Christian 
adherents. It is no failure of Christianity. What was 
said in an earlier lecture regarding the intensive expansion 
of the religion may be pleaded here. Whatever has been 
the usage of the past, it is only now that multitudes of 
men are seeing the utter incompatibility between modern 
war and intelligent Christianity. It is possible that war 
once was a social advance. It may once have been waged 
for ends for which humanity had not then found wiser 
methods. Condemnation of war to-day need not carry 
with it an assertion that it has never served any good 
end. But as things are now, as the world has come to 
be, as men are now related, it is utterly indefensible to take 
war any longer for granted. If ever there was need for 
it, that need ought to be past. Any thorough knowledge 
of the fair implications of the situation reveals that war 
and Christianity are not feasible in the same world. The 
argument may be rested on social bases, or economical 


AND THE WORLD 197 


arguments, or logical implications, or anywhere else, but 
for the Christian Faith it rests on the contradiction which 
war suggests between the spirit of Christ and itself. This 
is no way to settle disputes between rational men. The 
very fact that disputes are allowed to reach the stage where 
men think of using forceful and brutal methods of adjust- 
ment is itself an indictment of civilization. Men do 
not fight until pent-up feelings have been allowed to 
develop into passion. ‘Ihe way to prevent war is to stop 
the occasions of war. ‘“The time to end war is fifty 
years before it begins.’’ If earnest men of all nations are 
really and deeply fraternal and Christian, war need not 
come upon the horizon at all. 

Let it not be forgotten, however, that it is exactly by 
the principles of the Christian Faith that war is most 
severely condemned. Observers are demanding of Chris- 
tians: ‘“‘How can you reconcile the teaching of your 
religion with preparations for war and the adoption of 
war policies and attitudes?’’ The reply is that they 
cannot do it at all in this modern day, and that, therefore. 
it is they who are to blame and not the Faith. And 
again it is not Christian believers but the Christian Faith 
which is offered to the world. They would have the 
world take the Faith and lead or aid in an honest effort 
to apply it to all of life. Meanwhile, in Christian lands 
the movement to end war and to find worthier ways of 
dealing with human disputes is gaining in strength. 

5. Inthe matter of human depressions, such as poverty 
and degradation, the Christian Faith takes a further 
definite stand. Such conditions have no justification in a 
rational and rightly ordered human society. 

(a) If the cause of depression lies in the broken or 
incapable spirit of men, then society must find ways of 
changing that spirit and of putting a new and ambitious 
life into men. ‘This is happening in many instances, and 


198 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


can happen in more. No wise educator takes a defective 
spirit as a finality. Indolence can be cured. Lack of 
ambition can be corrected. When poverty and depression 
are voluntary they constitute a social and personal problem 
to which society must set itself. Only a cynical disbelief 
in the possibilities of human nature can justify accepting 
depression as essential to certain types of men. ‘These 
types have larger capacities than have been developed. 
When families are poor and unprovided by their own 
choice, then it is their choice that must become an object 
of concern for the social order. And this will be precisely 
according to the Christian idea, which rests on unquestion- 
ing faith in the value of each individual and in his possi- 
bilities of character and social service. 

(b) But some depression is involuntary. In some 
lands it is woven into the very fabric of prevailing social 
and religious systems that some men are favored above 
others and that there is no escape from that condition. 
With this idea the Christian Faith can have nothing in 
common. In the practice of Christian lands social dis- 
tinctions are never irretrievable. In these lands it is 
possible to pass from one social group to another without 
offending any social or religious order. The “‘lower”’ 
social classes often furnish the national leaders, while 
members of the “‘higher’’ classes may by their own mis- 
deeds lose their place and become members of far lower 
groups. This of itself constitutes a social and religious 
problem. But the way is clear for the solution of it, 
under Christian influence. No highways are closed to 
men of any group by any religious obstacle. But it is 
involuntary and socially forced poverty and depression 
that brings the largest indictment on civilization. Such 
depression has been taken for granted, but it can no longer 
be assumed. There is enough for all, or enough could 
be secured for all. Poverty is wholly unnecessary in the 


AND THE WORLD 199 


world as it is. [here need be no flat level on which all 
men live. There may be differences, since some may make 
more and some less of their opportunities and possessions, 
but there is no reason why any part of the community 
should be required to live below the proper level of human 
life in a world where the resources of life can be controlled. 
» This ideal of the Christian Faith calls for closer 
international relations so that the resources of the world 
may become available for all parts of the world. Some 
nations have less than they need for the care of their 
depressed classes, but other nations lying close beside them 
are sure to have what is needed. The problem becomes 
one of exchange and partnership, a problem which can be 
worked out more fairly in the spirit of human brother- 
hood than in any other way. This is the proposal of the 
Christian Faith. 


Ill 


Over against these five major evils and all their col- 
lateral and consequent evils, the Christian Faith proposes 
two ideals. (a) For the individual it offers the ideal of 
the character and spirit of Jesus Christ himself. He is the 
normative man, by whom all men are to test themselves 
and to be tested. He is at once the despair and hope of 
his followers. He is equally the despair and hope of the 
world. ‘The solution of the world’s problem, so far as 
it lies in personal relationships, lies in the producing of 
men of the type and character of Christ. Such men are 
not impossible. In so far as they have yet been developed 
they have been the men whom every straining situation 
has needed. (b) For the social order the Christian Faith 
offers the ideal of The Kingdom of God, of which the 
Founder of the Faith constantly spoke. It is a rich con- 
ception, with large content. A Christian philosopher has 
recently described it as ‘‘a spiritual organism, a fellowship 


200 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


of persons, bound together in codperative love and form- 
ing in union with God the tissue and web of the spiritual 
World—the eternal Universe.’’ This is not too strong 
a word. But we can express the central meaning in an 
accepted phrase: The Kingdom of God means the rule 
of God in the hearts and lives of men. His rule in their 
hearts is personal and must be accepted voluntarily. ‘che 
power of God controls all things as things, and so far 
as men are mere things they are constantly under his con- 
trol. But so far as they are persons, his rule is accepted 
by them voluntarily if it is established at all. His rule 
in the lives of men is social, determining their relations to 
each other. His will becomes normative for conduct, as 
the character of Christ becomes normative for personal 
character. 

This reveals the Christian reply to the question, What 
is progress? There is manifestly no way of deciding 
whether we are progressing or losing ground and no way 
of telling how far we have gotten, unless we know in 
which direction and where we want to go. The whole 
subject is under wide discussion, much of it wholly ac- 
ceptable to Christian thinking because it is really an 
analysis of the ultimate aims of Christ. “he human race 
progresses as it comes nearer to the acceptance of the rule 
of God in the hearts and lives of its members. It will be 
no slavishly uniform experience. It will have in it full 
play for human diversities, but these diversities will not 
set some against others. “Those who are seeking to serve 
the same will may not struggle against each other. 

The establishing of this Kingdom of God in the world 
will produce a social order with three characteristics: 
First, it will be marked by righteousness. Christ once 
commanded his followers to put first in their concern the 
Kingdom of God and his righteousness, seeing everything | 
else as a mere addition to life. “The Kingdom of God is | 


AND THE WORLD 201 


inseparable from righteousness. Thoughtful men may dis- 
cuss the proximate standard of right, but for the Christian 
Faith the ultimate standard of right, which measures all 
proximate standards, is the will of God, itself the expres- 
sion of his nature and character. What a moral being 
ought to do in a given emergency may be debated, but the 
only debate will be on details. If man could find on any 
matter the mind of God as the center and power of the 
moral order, that would be his duty. Slowly such an 
order does develop before earnest men. Men who wish 
supremely to do right are the hope of the present human 
order. 

Secondly, the Kingdom of God in the world will pro- 
duce the condition of peace. It will not be the peace of 
supineness and indifference, nor the peace of force and 
fear. It will be the peace that issues from righteousness, 
from assurance that one will both do justly and receive 
justice. “There is no other secure peace. Christ once said 
that he did not come to send peace but a sword, and the 
saying has troubled many students of his teaching. ‘The 
context of the saying shows that he was speaking of the 
assured effect of his teachings on certain conditions. Truth 
is always sure to cause differences among men. When a 
new truth comes in sight, which will disturb accepted 
opinions, the first thought of some men is to silence it and 
to prevent disturbance. Christ knew that his followers 
could not long practice any such silence. What they rec- 
ognize to be true they must make known, and this will 
create the disturbance that truth always makes. And yet 
the outcome of all truth is new progress toward peace. 
Falsehood is the sure cause of strife. In a sound and 
Christian social order there will be the peace that comes 
from glad admission of truth and of human rights. 

The third condition produced by the Kingdom of God 
on earth is that of human joy. God could not have 


202 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


meant the human race to be miserable, nor to abandon 
any part of itself to misery. Happiness is the normal con- 
dition of childhood, and there is deadly error in any 
social system whose children are doomed to unhappiness. 
But Christ said that his followers must become as little 
children. Whatever else this may mean, it certainly in- 
cludes the temper of mind that keeps one peaceful and 
happy. No man can safely make his own happiness an 
object of direct endeavor, but every man may make the 
happiness of others one of his chief objects of effort. When 
it is seen that any condition permanently and inevitably 
destroys or hinders the happiness of others, it is clear that 
this condition is not compatible with the full expression 
of the Kingdom of God. Happiness is not first. Not 
even peace is first. Righteousness is first. Both happi- 
ness and peace come out of conditions of righteousness or 
they are precariously held. One of the pre-Christian 
writers said that the fruits of righteousness should be 
peace, and another wrote that there could be no peace to 
the wicked. It is useless to offer peace or happiness to 
men who are morally wrong. Joy could not come in the 
world of a moral God except as the outcome of a right 
heart and life. 

The Christian Scripture gathers this new social order 
up in a single phrase: ‘“The Kingdom of God is righteous- 
ness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’ It is easy 
to see how it would stand in contrast with much of the 
existing social condition of the world to-day. It is equally 
easy to see how suited it is to true human nature and how 
certainly human nature would be brought to its best ex- 
pression in such an order. It blends liberty and fellow- 
ship, the liberty of righteousness and the fellowship of 
peace, with the added joy of right relationship with God 
and men. Already in their own spirits multitudes of men 
are finding the reality of this Kingdom, and it is to earn- 


AND THE WORLD 203 


est men of this sort that we must look for the realization 
of it in the world to replace the present social order wher- 
ever that order conflicts with the Kingdom of God. 


IV 


The Kingdom of God is no mere dream of Christian 
believers. Instead, the Christian Faith has a clear pro- 
gram for approach to its ideals. “This Faith does not ad- 
mit that any evils are inevitable or incorrectible. Nor 
does it admit that humanity is the subject of a blind evo- 
lution which must take its allotted way unchanged and 
unhastened. As a recent Christian writer has expressed it: 
“The Christian Faith makes its definite choice between a 
blind evolutionary struggle and a guided struggle between 
love and the misused freedom of man.”’ It believes that 
all these evils lie within the sphere of human freedom. 
With evolution, as we have said, Christianity has no battle. 
Many of its warmest defenders are Christian thinkers, 
who count it the way whereby God has made his world. 
But with the theory of blind, unguided forces, gaining no 
end except accidentally, Christianity has a perennial battle. 
It cannot agree that the movements of the world are to- 
ward no end whatever. It utterly denies that the wonder- 
ful codrdination of forces which has accomplished the 
marvelous results of the world as we now know it has 
come about by unguided chance. And when human ra- 
tionality appeared on the scene, however it came, the 
forces of progress received a new impulse and a new con- 
trol. Reason, moral character, responsibility are central 
ideas for Christian thinking, and it does not admit that 
men are helpless in presence of blind forces accomplishing 
they know not what. Rational beings have immense 
power in the entire order of which they are part, and 
can bring about what they see ought to be accomplished. 
It is not hopeless, therefore, but merely rational, to propose 


204 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


a program for the attainment of the Kingdom of God and 
the correction of the evils which now injure humanity. 
In that program there are four items, all easy to state, all 
difficult to execute. 

1. A primary item in the Christian program is the 
wide developing of a clear faith that all evils can be rem- 
edied. Whatever ought to be can be. What larger pur- 
pose the world may serve in the plans of God we do not 
know, but in the world as we now know it the highest 
manifestation of value is in personal moral beings, and 
the world must have for part of its rational purpose the 
serving and consummation of such beings. It can impose 
no impossible obstacles in their way. There can be 
nothing essential to human nature which constitutes a 
barrier to the completion of human nature, unless the 
universe is hopelessly illogical. Neither in the soul of man 
nor in the conditions under which he develops can there 
be, therefore, any essential evils. “Those that exist can all 
be cured. 

This faith of the curability of all evils takes three 
stages, and every recognized evil of the human order 
passes through these stages. We have already hinted at 
this (Lecture II), but the process may now be more fully 
described. (a) In the first stage the evil is recognized 
as regrettable but as a matter of course. Generally it 
is a condition of such long standing that it is thought to 
be deeply grounded in human nature or in the order of 
life. Slavery passed through this stage. It was counted 
an inevitable accompaniment of human relationship. To 
be sure, it was the masters who felt most sure about it, 
just as it is oftenest kings who are sure of the divine 
right of kings. It is so with poverty to-day. Proposals 
for the cure of poverty are generally met with sarcasm; 
the proposer evidently does not know the facts about 
poverty. Many persons have this same attitude toward 


AND THE WORLD 205 


war. ‘‘Men always have fought and men always will 
fight.”” They think in the same way about corruption 
in politics; it is regrettable but unescapable. So with 
intemperance; since early recorded history men have abused 
liquor in various forms, and presumably they will always 
do so. Now, so long as any evil is taken as a matter of 
course there is no hope of correcting it. No one will make 
any serious effort for the purpose. Instead, some will find 
ways of justifying it and of showing that objections to 
it are unreasonable or even impious. or at this stage 
almost every evil is sure to be supported by the sacred 
books, Christian or other, which will bear most weight 
in the argument. 

(b) There comes in time, however, another stage, when 
the evil becomes a problem. Men begin to wonder 
whether after all it is inevitable. “They do not see just 
how to correct it; they are not even sure that it is cor- 
rectible, but they have an uneasy feeling that something 
ought to be done to make it different. This generally results 
in efforts at regulation, in the hope of ameliorating evil 
results to some degree. Such a stage is always caused by 
the appearance of some ideal of life which is interfered 
with by the evil under discussion. Slavery passed into 
this stage for Christians when it was realized that it 
involved the suppression of the personalities of myriads 
of men who ought to have the full chance to come into 
likeness to Christ and their fellows. A similar funda- 
mental injury to personality is making war a serious 
problem. This is not the stage of cure but of debate and 
unrest. The evil is no longer a matter of course. It no 
longer has to be accepted without question. Perhaps 
after all there may be some way of dealing with it, without 
violating either the integrity of human nature of the 
purpose of God as expressed in the natural order. 

(c) Then comes a third stage, when the evil is seen 


206 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


to be impossible, ..o part of the natural order, ruinous 
instead of essential in the human order. ‘There is then 
no longer any question about whether its cure ought to 
be attempted or whether there is any way of curing it. 
The only question is as to the way in which it shall 
certainly be cured. ‘This is the stage of methods of cor- 
rection, trials of this and that, plans to do it in this way 
and that way. At last the true and successful way is 
found and humanity sets itself to the cure of the evil. 
Slavery passed through this stage and was long the ground 
of earnest and divisive debate. Different groups found 
different ways of handling the evil, but it has been ended 
or is on the way to ending in all even nominally Christian 
lands. 

A really intelligent Christian Faith holds this third 
stage before all thoughtful men. ‘There is no inevitable 
social evil. It is not necessary for society to surrender 
to anything that ruins it or its members. The forming 
of this assurance among men is a primary part of the 
program of Christianity. A Faith which sets out with an 
incarnation of the infinite God in Christ as the Master of 
love could not do without this conviction. 

2. A second item in the Christian program for the 
establishing of the Kingdom of God on earth is the pro- 
duction of increasing numbers of men of good will, men 
who will yield to the force of goodness and execute the 
program of love. Nothing can take the place of this 
production of reconstructed personalities. At the last it 
is what persons do that brings hope to the world. This 
is the order of a Personal God and it lies in its nature that 
personalities are its chief agents. These good men are 
committed to the program of Christ. They are not 
merely good, but good-for-something. Their goodness 
expresses itself forcefully in behalf of their fellows. God 
has made himself known most powerfully through per- 


AND THE WORLD 207 


sonalities whom he has made worthy to be his messengers. 
And a good man is still the most forceful reality in the 
moral order. ‘This will explain the normal procedure 
of Christian expansion. It begins with an appeal to a 
few men, perhaps to but one man, and proceeds on that 
basis until it has secured a group of adherents who in 
turn become winners of other men. At every crisis new 
groups of such men must be formed, ordinarily around 
one or two outstanding men who have become unshakably 
convinced of the great Christian realities. [he history of 
great reformations is the story of great reformers. When 
Christ was initiating his enterprise, which he intended to 
become world wide he did not preach a crusade nor start 
a popular uprising. Indeed, the record tells that he checked 
more than one such uprising which might have been 
turned to his personal advantage. Instead, he was devot- 
ing himself to the forming of a small group of men who 
would understand his program and himself. With a 
body of good men, sdtindly and solidly won to his enter- 
prise, he could safely trust it in their care. This is the 
only wise program of Christianity, adopted in all its suc- 
cessful movements. In every nation the primary need is 
for men who are good, good-for-something, good for the 
sake of their fellows, good with the goodness of God in 
Christ. The production of such men is the second essen- 
tial step in the program of the Christian Faith. 

3. A third item in the program for bringing the King- 
dom of God upon earth is the developing of the keenest 
intelligence in these men of good will. Goodness by itself 
is not enough. Sometimes grave harm is done by men 
who are good but unintelligent. “The mere acceptance of 
a principle of life or of government or of progress does 
not insure the right application of it. There must be 
also careful study both of the meaning of the principle in- 
volved and of the conditions to which it is to be applied. 


208 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


This is the explanation of the strong insistence of historic 
Christianity on education in all its branches. Even in 
those dark ages of which we were speaking in a former 
lecture, it was the Christian Church which kept all the 
learning there was in Europe. In later days, the school 
and the Church have been close allies, the school receiving 
its earlier forms and much of its continued support from 
the Church. But the Christian Faith is concerned with all 
education that may be given under any auspices. The 
more men know about the world of God, the better pre- 
pared they are to master the future and to present to God 
the world which he purposes them to make. Religion is at 
its best when it is most intelligent, and whoever opposes 
the advance of truth in any field whatever is a mistaken 
advocate of the Christian Faith. Nor does any Christian 
consciously make any such opposition. 

But Christianity considers the development of good 
will essential to true education. An educated man is a 
peril to the world if he is not a good man. The knowl- 
edge of chemistry and its poisons is a blessing in the right 
kind of minds, but it is a grave curse when evil men re- 
ceive it. It is not proved, indeed it is disproved, that edu- 
cation in itself increases human happiness and virtue. Has 
not every nation been betrayed at times by its ablest men? 
Has not every educator seen some of his ablest pupils fail 
utterly in the moral life? ‘The establishing of schools is 
a national necessity, but it is not a finality. Much will 
depend on what is taught in the schools and whether 
character is formed. Education sharpens the tool, but 
there are forms of education which provide no skill nor 
sobriety in using it when it is sharpened. This is why 
the program of Christianity so generally puts goodness 
first. The initial program of Christ used men who were 
described as “‘unlearned and ignorant,’ by which was 
meant that they had no ordinary school advantages, which 


AND THE WORLD 209 


were not widely available for their class in that day. But 
under the spell of the new goodness which formed in them 
and which they had seen at its fullest in Christ himself, 
they became alert, keen, trained men of insight. Presently 
there appeared men of the highest culture to take part in 
the leadership. Testimony was thereby borne to the fact 
that learning and goodness are not in conflict. No man 
ever knew too much to help the Christian program, but 
many a learned man has lacked the essential goodness 
which would make him most helpful. 

4. A fourth item in the Christian program for giving 
the world a right social order is the spread in the world 
of a true and health-giving religion. This means that the 
program must be constantly regarded as the outgrowing 
of the will of God in the world. Religion is not the 
mark of a certain stage in human progress but an essential 
element in human relationships. It is the acceptance by 
the human spirit of its widest environment and the resolu- 
tion to bring its lesser environments into accord with it. 
But it is also the point of codperation between God and 
man. Only religious men have any consciousness of fel- 
lowship with infinite power and wisdom. The Christian 
Faith in its belief in the incarnation of God in Christ and 
in the constant manifestation of God in other moral per- 
sonalities reminds the world that God is not to be thought 
of as remote from its life nor indifferent to its needs. He 
is at work in the history of humanity, and is ready to do 
larger things when men are ready to accept partnership 
with him. He does not cut the nerve of the human will 
by executing his plans without human codperation, There 
is a Chinese saying: ‘‘ ‘What will you have?’ says God; 
‘pay for it and take it.’’’ “The same idea appears in an old 
Greek story in which a slave pleads with his fellows: 
“Why call ye upon the gods? Ye have hands; wipe your 
own noses!’’ But this is not the full Christian idea. One 


210 THE CHRISTIAN CONVICTION 


of the earliest writers reminds Christian believers that they 
are co-laborers with God, building the new Kingdom un- 
der his guidance and support and by his aid, so that their 
small efforts gain more than their natural results. The 
same writer said that he could do all things in Christ who 
strengthened him. If anyone looking out on the world 
as it is declares that the new world is impossible, let him 
remember the familiar word of Jesus: ‘“‘With men it is 
impossible, but not with God, for with God all things are 
possible.”’ The Christian Faith presents a perpetual 
and abiding power which is available for good men every- 
where who will accept the program of Jesus Christ for the 
new day which he seeks to bring. It cannot be done apart 
from God, and it is as a religion that the Christian Faith 
offers itself to the world, not as a mere ethic, nor as a body 
of principles for human conduct, nor as a history. Its 
hope is in God. It is a religion definitely and un- 
ashamedly. | 

This is why it is offered so earnestly to the nations 
which have not known it heretofore. It is not Christen- 
dom that is offered; it is not a finished faith that is offered; 
it is not an ideal history that is offered. It is a great, 
formative Personality out from whom there has come the 
Christian religion, not as a body of doctrines which can 
be passed on unchanged from one mind to another, but 
as a vital reality which will express itself in different 
ways according to the needs and agencies to be met and 
used. We who have been Christians for generations do 
not ask that others copy us. We offer them the Original 
whom we have poorly copied. We do not want them 
to drink from our stream. We offer them the Fountain 
out of which our stream has flowed and which is not re- 
sponsible for the detritus which we have cast into it. 
We do not want them to take our teaching. We offer 
them our Teacher who is also our Savior, and ask them 


AND THE WORLD 211 


to sit at his feet, as we have so badly done. Our experi- 
ence is at their service so far as it may help. A modern 
statesman has recently said that “history is written that 
we may go over the road of progress but once and not a 
hundred times.’” We know that men are enough alike so 
that one man may learn from another, from his successes 
and his failures. Christian believers have had knowledge 
of Christ and his truth and love for these many years, and 
they are deeply convinced that he is what the world needs 
as it needs nothing else. “They do not want the world 
to come to them but to him. 

An incident in the Christian Scripture tells the whole 
story. A father once brought his stricken child to some 
of the followers of Christ to be cured of his ailment. 
‘They found they could not cure him. But presently 
Christ himself came by and seeing the difficulty said, 
“Bring him to me,’ and when that was done his trouble 
was removed, and the lad was sent out to his glad, free 
life again. It has proved many times that the followers 
of Christ have not been so able as they ought to be to 
help the needy world, but when they fail, there is still a 
sure victory in bringing the needy world to Christ him- 
self. He does not fail. It is to him that the Christian 
conviction would carry the world, 







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